A Vampire In Every Pot And A Demon In Every Garage
by Manchester
Summary: And to think it all came about before Halloween night when Xander was inspired by a certain Simpson character.
1. Chapter 1

*Life hates me.*

Xander Harris glumly stood in the middle of the Halloween costume shop after he'd just groaned that inward complaint to himself. His depression only increased at hearing the feminine squeals of delight coming from a few rows over, where Buffy and Willow were undoubtedly having better luck than him in finding a really great costume for that holiday tomorrow night.

That young man's discontent was due to two specific factors. Firstly, he was dead broke, which meant that he couldn't afford a single one of those awesome outfits from numerous movies, books, television shows, comics, and other popular culture of the twentieth century. Secondly, even if he DID have all the money in the world, Xander wouldn't have had the nerve to get any of those really fine costumes.

'Cause Snyder totally had it in for him.

That high-school principal had personally threatened Xander with a lifetime detention, if on Halloween night at the educational facility where young trick-or-treaters would be waiting for their escorts around Sunnydale, that teenage boy showed up dressed as any character and in any kind of attire that Snyder disliked.

*Which kinda puts a damper on me dressing up as an empty box of Rogaine and moaning to that bald jerk I'm the ghost of the millions of time he brought and used that hair-growing stuff without any of it working,* mentally sniggered Xander, a happy grin momentarily lighting up his features. After a few more moments, his smile faded, and the boy began to trudge along the rows between the racks of costumes, while still thinking his gloomy thoughts.

*Guess it also means I can't go as a soldier dude like I was planning, wearing Grandpa Harris' Army fatigues that I pulled out of the trunk in the basement. Snyder probably stepped on one of those teeny, green, plastic soldier figurines as a kid, and that scarred him for life. I show up dressed in those clothes, with a toy rifle I was planning to get here, and the troll will have a flashback and freak out, for sure. Then, fifty years from now, some kid in the detention room will ask, 'Why's an old dude with a long, white beard and cobwebs hanging from his ears sitting there in the corner?', and he'll get told, 'Oh, that's Xander Harris, who pissed off the Almighty Snyder.'*

The Sunnydale native now stopped in his walk down the row, and he glowered around the impressive costumes on both sides of himself, that seemed to be mocking the young man. Xander then chided himself, *Hey, man, there's gotta be some kind of way to get even against Snyder, and not wind up in trouble for it. Let's see, who could I dress up as, annoying that little troll to the max but without him able to retaliate? Oh, yeah, it has to be someone that everybody knows, to make sure they all get the joke. AND it has to be within my budget, which is basically zilch. Now, that's a toughie.*

Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, Xander gazed unseeingly at the costumes around him, as he concentrated. *Some historical guy like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, that not even Snyder could say a word against? Nah, the whole point of it has to be someone who'd cause chrome-dome's ulcer to grow bigger and more painful. So, who makes Snyder worried or nervous?*

Further down the racks of outfits, a flash of a strange color, like a fluorescent orange/yellow, now caught Xander's attention, as he blinked at one costume hanging by its hook, with this character's glassily staring head being just as bald as the skull of a certain principal, except for a few lonely hairs that Snyder would have certainly coveted.

A stupendous burst of inspiration now blossomed inside Xander Harris' gleeful mind.

A minute later, Ethan Rayne's gloating over the sale of a certain noblewoman's gown to the latest incarnation of the Slayer was rudely interrupted by a young man coming up to the register counter, with this teenager maniacally cackling to himself while waving through the air in his right hand a long strip of white cloth. Warily examining the approaching youth, Ethan edged back from behind the register as the boy triumphantly stopped by the counter, and he then plunked his piece of fabric onto this flat surface, to then start digging into his right front jeans pocket.

"So, how much do I owe you for that? I hope it won't cost much, but I'm sure I've got enough-" was uttered in a rush of words that would've been difficult enough for Ethan to understand, let alone said in that strange Californian accent babbled by the young lad now tossing a few crumpled dollar bills onto the counter.

Managing to gather his wits, Ethan now dubiously examined both the wrinkled money and the strip of cloth lying next to each other. The Englishman looked up to stare at his waiting customer while cautiously asking, "Er, is that ALL you care to purchase?"

"Yup," vigorously nodded the boy.

"Humph," Ethan contemptuously snorted, to then grudgingly remind himself that a sale was a sale, as with a certain amount of disdain, he swept up the grubby bills and then entered the transaction into the register. Using his snottiest tone, the older man then inquired, "I suppose you would like a bag for your multiple acquisitions?"

Cheerfully ignoring the shopkeeper's sarcasm, Xander just shook his head, and he scooped up the strip of cloth he'd just bought, stuffing this into a jeans pocket, while casually saying, "Nah, thanks anyway. 'Bye." At those last words, the teenager turned and started off towards the front door of the costume shop.

Blinking at the abrupt conclusion of their business, and feeling a sudden rush of curiosity, Ethan called after the departing lad, "Just a moment! Why exactly did you want that, what you acquired?"

Still heading straight for the exit and not looking back, Xander tossed over his shoulder, "Oh, I just needed it to finish off my costume at home. Well, thanks again."

Watching the young man about to leave, Ethan's eyes narrowed, and the Chaos mage now put the tip of his index finger against the top of the counter, drawing a complex, invisible, mystical character in rapid flicks of that digit, while the man's lips soundlessly moved.

At the front door, Xander reached out for the door handle, to instead stop dead and then quickly bringing his right hand upwards, giving the back of his head a quick swat to brush away the fly or whatever it was that he'd abruptly sensed there. Right after that, Xander kept on going, this time successfully pushing the door open and stepping out of the costume shop as the door closed behind him, never noticing the close attention being paid to him during all of this actions.

*Hmmm, a little too much power there, if he actually felt it,* Ethan reflected, still standing behind the counter. *Well, I was a bit rushed, having to make sure that cloth strip was imbued with the Chaos forces that'll break loose when Janus is invoked. I'm sure everything he's got on him now will cause that insolent schoolboy become whatever character, being, or creature that he'll dress up during this glorious Halloween. Ah, well, it'll be most amusing, though perhaps not for him.*


	2. Chapter 2

During his last check before actually putting on the costume laid out on the small table that took up most of the storage closet, Xander looked up at hearing noises coming from the main library room beyond the door of the tiny cubicle. Stepping over in just his boxers and his socks to this door, Xander cautiously opened it a crack and peeked through the space, to suddenly allow a wide grin to appear on his face, as he pulled open the door a little bit wider, permitting his head to poke out while keeping the rest of his body hidden behind the door.

"Hail, Duchess Buffy, the most fairest of them all!" whooped Xander at the dark-haired teenage girl standing there in her ornate, old-fashioned, noblewoman's red gown, who reacted only by turning her head to smile at her friend giving the Slayer an admiring look. But then, with her heightened senses, Buffy had already heard Xander's breathing even before she'd entered the library.

Willow, on the other hand, had jumped in startlement at the voice coming from behind her, to spin around in time to receive Xander's resigned comment, "Oh, Wils, not the ghost costume again?"

Pulling back the hood of her white sheet that had the word 'BOO!' written upon this, an annoyed young redhead snapped to the oddly-acting teenager behind his door, "You know I wear it every Halloween! Anyway, how come you didn't show up at Buffy's house, like we planned? Her mom told us you'd be here."

Xander's head bobbed, with his friends realizing he'd shrugged his shoulders concealed by the closet door. "I had to sneak in here to change, since I didn't want Snyder to see me and my costume before it was ready. By the way, is he out there?"

Buffy and Willow glanced at each other in perplexity, with the latter girl also starting to develop a worried look, as Buffy answered, "Yeah, mister high-and-mighty's strutting around like usual, bothering everyone. Why do-"

Cutting into the Slayer's reply, Willow groaned, "Xan, please tell me you're not gonna do something stupid."

From where she'd been staring at the smartest student in Sunnydale High now having her eyes closed in real pain, Buffy turned her head to examine Xander, as that boy then allowed a truly fiendish grin to slowly break free on his face, as he pulled his own head back behind the door, followed by him giving a spine-chilling cackle: "Heh, heh, heh…"

A very taken-aback Buffy once more looked at Willow, who still had her eyes squeezed shut, before the Slayer ventured, "He's gonna do something stupid, right?"

Willow simply nodded in resignation.

Inside the storage closet, Xander quickly dressed, once more delighting in the fact that evidently he and Grandpa Harris had been exactly the same size, with his new clothes fitting perfectly, if a bit oddly, since he certainly never wore anything like this all the time. The teenager gave a wary sniff, to then feel relieved at learning the few hours' airing his outfit had been given had managed to disperse most of the overpowering smell of mothballs that had been clinging to the garments when Xander had first pulled them out of his ancestor's storage chest. Wiggling his toes in the strange footwear that had also been in this rectangular metal box, Xander finished with the last of his family attire, jauntily tilting forward the blue headgear he now placed upon his cranium.

Now, for the final part of his costume. Xander picked up from the table the strip of white cloth he'd bought at that stuck-up Englishman's Halloween shop. However, since then, the boy had stapled together the ends of this strip, making it into a long loop of fabric, and then on the front of this loop, he'd also stapled several capital letters that had been patiently cut out by scissors from a large, black sheet of thick paper lifted from the art supply room. It looked really professional, proudly noted the young man, as he slipped the wide ribbon over his head and then adjusted the band of cloth that was now draped over his right shoulder and across the chest, diagonally down to his left hip.

"Okay, guys, here I come!" Hearing their friend call out that alert, Buffy and Willow expected what happened next, as the closet door suddenly swung completely ajar. What wasn't expected was exactly what now stood in the doorway for the two girls to gawk at.

Xander Harris, in all his shown glory, including every tooth gleaming in the biggest grin of that young man's life, was wearing a boxy, blue suit cut in a style that had to be at least several decades old, a skinny blue tie from the same era, a crisp white shirt, good pants, shiny black wingtips, and a formal men's hat of the kind last seen during the early Kennedy administration. However, the strangest thing of all was what now looped diagonally down the teenager's torso. From his shoulder to his hip, a band of white cloth hung there, with black letters attached to this strip that spelled out: MAYOR.

Just barely registering how Willow slowly sank into a nearby library chair, to start rocking back and forth while holding her ribs and screaming with laughter, a wide-eyed Buffy nervously watched as this bizarre creature bounded towards her, his hand held out along the way so that when he stopped, this parody of a politician grabbed her own limp hand to then start zealously giving her a vigorous pump-handle handshake, all while declaiming an enthusiastic oration.

"Good golly gosh! It's a tremendous honor for me to welcome the Slayer to our fair town of Sunnydale, the best little city in California! Without a doubt, our fellow citizens that I strive my utmost to assist in their daily labors must be truly thankful to have such a charming and beauteous maiden to firmly reprove those vile miscreants that dare to disturb the tranquility of our bucolic community!"

At no point, during that stream of words that Buffy was numbly listening to, did Xander pause for breath, close his lips that still showed off all his shiny teeth, or stop shaking her hand so hard she was beginning to bounce up and down in her dancing slippers.

Finally starting to regain her senses, the girl in the brown wig easily snatched her hand from Xander's grip, and shooting a sideways glare at a red-faced Willow in her chair beginning to have actual tears of mirth trickling down her cheeks, Buffy then shifted her annoyed gaze back at the grinning comedian across from her, opening her mouth to start yelling at him to find out just what the hell was going on.

Before she could utter a single syllable, Xander had thrust his right hand into the inner jacket pocket of his suit, and the young man then pulled out something that was proudly held up right in front of the astonished Slayer's face, who now stared at a small, somewhat worn and dog-eared card, with the following lines printed upon this white slip of paper:

MAYOR OF SUNNYDALE

A Nice Place To Live!

At the very bottom of the card, just below a last line of a person's printed name, there had been written in now-faded ink a single sentence and a signature:

_Study hard, young man, and you'll become a success later on in life!_

_Richard Wilkins, III_


	3. Chapter 3

"He _really_ talks like that?" incredulously asked Buffy, handing back the card to Xander after she'd finished examining it.

"Yep," the teenage boy cheerfully answered, carefully tucking the business card once more into his jacket pocket. At his side, a smiling Willow nodded in agreement.

Buffy looked a bit askance at her friends standing there in their costumes in the main library room, before she tried another question, "What makes you so sure?"

"'Cause just like the stories we got from the older kids before it was our turn, at the beginning of freshman year, we had a school assembly for us new guys, and he came out from behind the curtain in the auditorium and made a long speech, all about us starting a really important chapter in our lives," reminisced Xander, sharing a nostalgic look with Willow.

Her face showing her sudden puzzlement, Buffy asked, "How come I didn't have that when I came here?"

Willow reminded the Slayer, "You were a sophomore transfer, remember? That's probably why you missed it."

"Yeah, Buffy," Xander agreed. He then looked a little sad, as the boy gently touched the section of his jacket where he'd put away the signed business card. Gazing off into the distance, Xander now quietly spoke, "After the speech, we were out in the hall heading back to class, when we saw the Mayor coming at us, with the principal and some other adults we didn't know. Right away, Jesse dared me to ask for his autograph, and I decided to go for it."

Glancing at Buffy's astonished face over hearing that, a faint smile now touched Xander's lips, as he chuckled, "Well, I stopped Mayor Dick right then and there, and told him I'd like him to sign something for me. He looked really surprised, and then he just grinned, whipped out a card, one of the other guys gave him a pen, and he wrote what you read on the card before giving it to me."

Reaching out to give Xander a hug, Willow beamed, "I was there too, Buffy, and that's how it happened."

An arm reached out to return the red-haired girl's embrace, and standing together in their costumes, Xander continued, "After that, I kept the card, and for a couple of days, I watched the local Sunnydale cable show, where Mayor Dick would give a speech and outline his plans, until I got his style down pat. Then, when I was around Jesse and Wils-" (the boy hugged her again) "-I'd pull out the signed card and start imitating the mayor, usually snarking at things like Cordy and her sheep, the local teachers, whatever. I always made you guys break up, didn't I, Wils?"

Willow looked up from where she'd been resting her head in the ghost costume's white hood against Xander's shoulder, to smile into his face. "Yeah, you did."

"Anyway, after a couple of weeks, I think I got bored, so I just quit doing it, put away the card in my wallet, and forgot about it. I wasn't until I was there yesterday in that costume shop with you guys that I remembered, when I got the idea for this outfit." Xander now gently let go of Willow and she did the same, both stepping away from each other, with the boy then looking down at his outdated clothing, a sudden smirk on his face.

Seizing this opportunity to end her guilty thoughts over her fellow Scoobies' friend that she hadn't managed to save (and could barely remember), the Slayer blurted out, "Xan, what's with that thing on your chest, anyway?"

"Oh, the sash?" Xander touched this strip of cloth with the letters stapled on it, and his smirk turning into an actual grin, he sniggered, "That came right from the Simpsons character Mayor Quimby."

It took a few moments until both girls there recognized the name of that corrupt politician on the animated tv show, who always wore a sash with his title to make sure people knew who he was, and then Willow and Buffy giggled in delight. As Xander proudly regarded his laughing friends, Willow managed to gasp, "Uh, Xan, what's with the suit? Does the mothball smell mean something?"

Rolling his eyes in mock exasperation, Xander snorted, "Nah, I just needed some kind of formal suit to wear, and Grandpa Harris' best clothes were right at hand. Hey, before you complain about the smell, just try to image what it was like a few hours ago. I think it would've knocked out a vamp faster than Buffy ever could punch the bloodsucker into dreamland."

At that last statement, the girls started laughing again, with Xander enjoying this, until finally the boy glanced at the main entrance to the library, his face brightening in expectation at what was going to happen next. Looking back at Buffy and Willow, Xander cackled, "Hey, guys, it's now time for my biggest performance of the night. You're all invited."

Willow got it first before Buffy, with the redhead screeching in alarm, "You're not gonna pretend to be Mayor Wilkins in front of _Snyder_?"

"Oh, you betcha," snickered Xander, who continued in absolute glee at the bogglement on the others' faces. "What's the little troll gonna do about it, anyway? Say that he hates my costume and character? Think how fast that'll get back to the original guy! Uh-huh, Snyder's not gonna dare to do anything to piss off Mayor Dick, not with that politician being on the school board. On second thought, please let that jerk principal shoot his mouth off or do something else that'll get him thrown out of here! I tell you, it's a win-win solution!"

It was Buffy who objected then. "What if _you_ get in trouble with the guy you're dressing up as?" glowered the young lady in her red gown.

"Hey, I got the perfect defense. I'm just a kid who thought it'd be fun to pretend to be that guy on Halloween, somebody who impressed me by being nice a while back when I asked him for his autograph. It wasn't like I planned to say or do anything nasty as him! Nope, totally innocent Xander Harris here, who honestly thought it'd be taken as a big compliment, Your Mayorship!" At the last sentence, Xander then plastered an angelic expression upon his features, followed with opening wide his ingenuous eyes, and quivering his lower lip at this schoolmates.

Willow and Buffy considered their clearly-insane friend, and then the two girls glanced at each other with serious faces. The Los Angeles native thoughtfully muttered aloud to her fellow Scooby, "So, what do you think are his chances of getting away with it?"

Giving a resigned shrug of her shoulders, Willow opined, "I think I'm going to have to bake him a cake with a file in it for his escape attempt when he's in jail."

"Can I lick the bowl afterwards?" eagerly asked the Slayer.

"Ha, ha, ha," sarcastically interrupted Xander. "Watch, and learn, ladies." At that, the teenager headed towards the library door to the school hallway outside, with the pair of girls trailing after him, both now having extremely dubious expressions on their faces.

Soon enough, the trio came to the head of the corridor leading into the main school lobby, from where issued the sounds of excited children chattering among themselves. Cautiously peeking around the corner of the hallway, Xander hastily pulled his head back, and then he looked down to give his costume one last check. Satisfied, the teenager took a deep breath, looked over his shoulder at his friends while giving them both a maniac grin that stayed on his face as Xander turned his head forward and then strode onwards with a purposeful air.

Willow and Buffy immediately rushed towards the hallway corner, and imitated Xander's actions of several moments ago in peeking around this, just in time to hear and see a politician walking with a spring in his step, his right hand out to give a manly handshake, and uttering a loud bellow that instantly silenced everyone else there, "SNYDER, MY BOY! IT'S WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"

This named person had spun around at hearing his name, and then the principal had become frozen in absolute shock, gaping at the teenager he detested coming up in that outdated suit, the sash, and the clear madness shining from Xander Harris' eyes. Snyder was still too paralyzed by his astonishment to react in time before his hand was grabbed by an iron-hard grip and then started to be pumped up and down numerous times, all while a wave of words washed over the older man.

"You seem to be in tip-top shape, my good man! Have you been working out?" At that, the faux-Mayor's free hand patted Snyder's stomach hard several times, causing that taken-unawares man to whoosh out his breath before he could find his wits to demand an explanation and the prompt liberation of his hand. As Snyder struggled to draw in some air, Xander kept on talking.

"Always an excellent idea! A sound mind in a sound body, as they say!" The politician's free hand went from Snyder's stomach to the top of his body, giving some more equally-hard pats on top of this man's hairless skull, with the thumps! of this resounding throughout the otherwise totally silent school lobby, as the crowd of young trick-or-treaters there in their costumes stared in absolute awe at what was happening, while listening to the following resolute speech.

"Well, it's been enjoyable having this chat with you, Principal Snyder, but alas, we all have our responsibilities, don't we? I'm quite sure that in the future we'll have the chance for a much longer discussion about current events, and I'll certainly look forward to it with great expectations, in the firm hope that there'll be no unwarranted likelihood of any possible negative incidents involving our recent tête-à-tête." Xander even managed to pronounce the last word correctly.

During all that, Snyder's hand had been relentlessly shaken, until this abruptly stopped, with the Mayor then giving his subordinate one final powerful squeeze of the other man's fingers that made the principal's face contort in agony. Dropping Snyder's limp arm, Xander now spun around to confront the children there in the lobby, waiting to be escorted around the town tonight.

All of those kids there at once took a step back after noticing those gleaming teeth and mad gaze presented on the face of this weirdo, who now flung out his arms horizontally, to make shooing motions with these, as he stepped forward, while trumpeting, "Gosharootie, little buckaroos! Tonight, we'll pluck this conurbation clean, taking every delicious scrap of chewy confections, if you possess the astuteness to pay utter and complete attention to my counsel! Now, who's with me?"

There was dead silence for a single moment, until an ear-splitting cheer burst from all the children there, with every one of these youngsters dashing towards the school front entrance in preparation for their despoilation of the candy bowls and trays waiting for them tonight in Sunnydale's homes. They were urged along by Xander Harris strolling after, singing:

_"Move 'em out, head 'em up,_

_Head 'em up, move 'em on._

_Move 'em out, head 'em up:_

_Rawhide!_

_Cut 'em out, ride 'em in,_

_Ride 'em in, cut 'em out,_

_Cut 'em out, ride 'em in:_

_Rawhide!"_

A few moments later, the school lobby was totally deserted, save for one last figure. Swaying slightly as he stared sightlessly straight ahead, Principal Snyder currently had his entire forehead throbbing in fury, accompanied by the grinding of his teeth that was wiping out several thousand dollars' worth of dental work. Unnoticed by the man, Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg were tiptoeing away down the school hallway, both silently agreeing with each other that the smart thing to do was to leave the school through another door, rather than risk having the principal catch them, and then circle around the building to join up with Xander at the front with the kids they were supposed to escort.

It was already clear that this Halloween night was going to be very…interesting.


	4. Chapter 4

As he strolled along the sidewalks of Sunnydale currently crowded with trick-or-treaters, including those children he was responsible for, Xander Harris kept on his face throughout his saunter a truly benevolent expression for his constituents. However, the teenager's thoughts were more unsettled, since something very peculiar had made itself evident during his various visits to people's homes. While standing at the front door with his charges as they grabbed for the offered candy, Xander had delivered fulsome sound bites in a certain politician's folksy style, about assorted local topics concerning Sunnydale and its residents. The young man had expected and had truly enjoyed the gales of laughter from those adults handing out the Halloween treats, each and every one who'd promptly recognized their costumed visitor on the doorstep of their homes.

No, what had really disconcerted Xander was the fact that when he hadn't broken character at all during his brief remarks, keeping a gleaming smile plastered upon his face while booming out his friendly and informal statement, his audiences had then done what the high-school student had never expected.

They had _listened_.

They had _paid attention. _

That didn't happen to Alexander LaVelle Harris at all, not to the slacker, the goofball, the Scooby Gang member who casually mentioned his sensible suggestions during their research parties on how to deal with the latest Hellmouth Big Bad, while also at the same time proposing that for her next patrol, Buffy Summers should dress up in a black wig, a breastplate, a leather skirt, and carry a Frisbee with numerous razor blades glued to the edges of that toy. Any vamp meeting Xena's little sis in a Sunnydale graveyard would surely be confused enough to be easy prey for the Slayer, right?

The rest of the Scoobies never seemed to notice that after jeering (and in one case uttering a depreciating cough) at Xander's immature and total-teenage-boy-in-lust proposals, they usually wound up following his plans, believing these to be their own ideas. Which was perfectly fine with him. As long as his girls and the others he loved stayed okay, who needed the credit?

On the streets of Sunnydale during Halloween night, Xander had an odd thought, *Geez, is that why Wilkins does it in the first place, talking like somebody from the fifties? They might laugh at him, but they also pay attention, too, and that gives him a chance to make his point. Dude's smarter than he looks.*

Chuckling to himself, the young man in the outdated suit came to a stop on the sidewalk, and he looked around, beaming at the peaceful All-Hallows scene of his fellow Sunnydalers safely out in the streets at night, an exceedingly rare event for that town uneasily located above the Boca del Infierno.

At that exact moment, a ceremony in a small costume shop concluded with three shouted words:

"JANUS! SUME NOCTEM!"

* * *

In his office at a deserted City Hall, Richard Wilkins III completed the sharpening of his new pencil, absently enjoying the grinding of the inner mechanism of the old-fashioned apparatus he was diligently cranking away. The mayor firmly disapproved of electric pencil sharpeners, despite how well they served as torture devices. *Really, those things are just gilding the lily. Why can't people simply be satisfied with what works and keep it that way?*

As he then pulled out the finished pencil, Wilkins held this writing instrument up to his face, appreciatively noting the sharpness of the black pencil lead, and sent towards the tip a quick puff of breath to blow off a few minuscule bits of shavings. Humming to himself a Sousa march, the mayor headed to his desk piled high with papers. Settling himself in his executive chair, Wilkins placed the pencil down on a bare space, and then he brought his hands together to clasp them, with his knuckles being cracked in the next moment. When he was doing this, the ruler of a small California city thoughtfully eyed the drudgery he was expected to finish tonight.

Frankly, it was at times like these that Richard Wilkins (I, II, and III, of course) wondered if that perhaps another approach would've worked just as well in becoming the lord and master of the Sunnydale Hellmouth. Back then, over a hundred years ago, he'd hit upon the idea of running for mayor and then using his magic to stay in office, making people forget the man they voted for every couple of years had been the exact same person in that job since the nineteenth century. It was true that lying low as a small-town politician meant potential rivals - demons and other magicial humans, to be exact - attempting to take over his city had usually ignored or disregarded good ol' Richard Wilkins until it was far too late for these now-deceased usurpers.

However, these failed takeovers by supernatural challengers had actually been the high points of his political career while he'd been working towards his Ascension. Wilkins had never really considered before becoming the Mayor of Sunnydale the sheer tedium of in fact running the affairs of those people living, working, and going around their business in a village, a town, and finally a city. Particularly since the problems, demands, and desires of humans had pretty much stayed the same over all the decades Wilkins had been in office, even if the technology had changed (the man in the office flatly refused to use the word 'improved'). Which meant that instead of complaining about their neighbor's chimney smoke blowing into their bedroom window, Sunnydalers now complained about their neighbor watching X-rated cable without closing the shades.

Not to mention those really boring occasions every four years when the mayor had to actually run for office - making speeches, shaking hands, and kissing babies - like there was any point whatsoever in this since nobody ever ran against him. It was all part of Sunnydale Syndrome, except that Wilkins had unthinkingly set that spell up the first time so long ago that in order for it to continue to work, the magical invocation needed him to truly campaign for office.

It hadn't ever gotten any more exciting after so many times. Though, at least during the quarterly bussing of the cute little tykes, Wilkins could also perform a taste test of his future meals. The mayor had become somewhat concerned over the last couple of decades about the high levels of preservatives already discernible in those charming youngsters, which had caused him to have a town law passed ordering all baby food sold in the Sunnydale supermarkets to be of organic origin, avoiding synthetic chemicals. That had been a bit of a mistake, since it had then attracted nationwide attention and praise about a small town's government showing concern for its citizens. Oh, well, during the following meetings with outside media, newly appointed Richard Wilkins III had been at his most cheerfully pompous, causing his interviewers to hastily end their questions before dropping dead from pure boredom. That had entertained the mayor enough so that he'd continued his excessively effusive discoursing during conversations and orations from then on, even though Sunnydalers had become accustomed to that, which rather spoiled the fun.

Sighing to himself as he finished his ruminations, Wilkins allowed his mood to brighten a trifle as he pointed out to himself that at least tonight would be a time when he could actually get some iwork/i done. In the entire town during Halloween, the majority of those fine fellows of demonic species would be staying in their lairs, since no self-respecting fiend would venture outside during something so tacky as this evening's holiday. The master of the Hellmouth had been a little bemused for the last twenty or thirty years on how the normal humans had somehow picked this up, to then unconcernedly step out of their homes into the Sunnydale night, all while attending costume parties and allowing their children to go trick-or-treating. The mayor certainly had nothing to do with it, instead regarding the inexplicable Halloween celebrations of those homo sapiens living in Sunnydale as just another minor mystery, of absolutely no concern to Richard Wilkins III whatsoever.

Instead, the unaging sorcerer had found out that All-Hallow's Night, as it had been called when he was a boy, was one of the few times of the year that nobody bothered him at all, and he could work in peace. Nodding firmly to himself in satisfaction over this, Wilkins grabbed his pencil, reached out to pull towards himself the first document at hand, and he then read the resolution for replacing the sewage system along State Street. As he scribbled a few notes on this document, Mayor Dick thought to himself, *I'm really going to enjoy eating those people.*

At that exact moment, a ceremony in a small costume shop concluded with three shouted words:

"JANUS! SUME NOCTEM!"


	5. Chapter 5

On Halloween night, Hyena continued her months-long nap in her den that had started after the events of the zoo visit a while back.

* * *

It had been a long time since the teenager had mentally checked upon the imprisoned spirit in the insubstantial cage Xander had hastily created in his mind around Hyena when she'd been loopy enough to allow it. Apparently, possessions had no experience with concussions, contusions, and the resulting analgesics, or in the latter case, the king-sized amounts Xander had needed after Buffy had clobbered him with the desk. Unfortunately, the young man had also been in an extremely woozy state from the blow to his head accompanied by the numerous painkillers, so that he could never remember afterwards exactly how he'd managed to pen up his unwanted visitor.

Once he'd finished healing up, without considering the odd fact that he'd done this much faster than normal, Xander had paid a few wary visits inside his head through meditation, cautiously examining the mental construct that imprisoned Hyena. It looked fine, still accomplishing its job of keeping that animal spirit from causing any more trouble, much to Xander's relief.

The teenager had never dared to closely approach the cage, prudently maintaining his position a good distance away in his mental landscape. There, it was easy enough to witness a yellow/green flash of a glinting eye peering at him through the massive bars of the enclosure, the flicker of motion of a furred side being rubbed against the inner side of the cage, and the ground-shivering snarl of a Primal Hyena expressing both her displeasure and her devout hopes of tearing out someone's throat in the near future. As he vanished back into the real world, Xander always made a note to ask Giles again if that Watcher had finally found out anything that could get rid of her.

Unfortunately, the sixteen-year-old boy was always distracted by his normal life on the Hellmouth: school, patrolling with Buffy, and trading insults with Cordelia Chase while contemplating one of life's most enduring mysteries - were her boobs real, or not? Until, in the end, it had become for him just another weird event on the Boca del Infierno, with the usual scars as the only reminder that it had ever happened. Only this time, the souvenir kept by Xander about the whole thing was something inside his head, safely tucked away, to be gradually ignored and then forgotten. It never occurred to Xander that a serious, staid gentleman like Rupert Giles, the only male adult around that the teenager respected, might have also forgotten about the whole thing.

It really wasn't the Englishman's fault. He'd known full well about the dangers of possessions by animal spirits, and the man had hastily sent out discreet inquiries among those in the mystical world who might have information pertaining to this, including whatever means to remove or do away with the occupier of that young man's mind. In the meantime, an anxious Giles had kept a prudent eye upon Xander for some time, to finally feel actual relief at observing nothing untoward being demonstrated by the lad recovering from his experience, in either behavior or mood. Those unspeakable Hawaiian shirts and the constant referring to himself by that equally-horrendous nickname had, sadly enough, already been part of Xander's personality long before the zoo incident.

The few bits of magical information Giles soon received concerning his inquiries also set at ease his worries. From those who'd answered, the one thing they'd all agreed upon was that a Primal possession roaming free in their host's mind would quickly take over, followed by the personality who'd formerly occupied their body becoming obliterated or subsumed. The possession would then animate the host body for whatever purposes it wished, for however long it wanted, until the body was destroyed or otherwise rendered useless, with the animal spirit then heading back into the astral plane. Obviously, since none of this had happened to Xander Harris in the short time he'd been possessed, that young man's extreme good fortune was clearly shown by the Primal spirit either deciding to leave entirely of its own volition or somehow being forced out of the host's mind before it was too late.

Giles had really meant to inform Xander of this happy news, until the Briton's natural reticence about personal matters had caused him to hesitate, and then maintain his silence. Evidently, the lad had already dealt with what had happened and then he'd properly put the whole unnerving event behind himself, since he'd never mentioned it again, so what good would it do to tell him something that would only bring up the distasteful (Giles had momentarily gagged over that unfortunate adjective) memories Xander surely possessed, about devouring that pig and Principal Flutie's equally-gory death?

Things would have certainly been different, if Xander had only been a little more honest after the whole thing and had actually told Giles about Hyena still being in his head, held prisoner in her mental cage that had been inexplicably created by a groggy teenager just a short time before the adult's visit. Assuming the Englishman hadn't immediately gone into terminal shock over something the equivalent of Buffy Summers suddenly developing the Theory of Relativity from scratch, the first obvious question from the disbelieving high-school librarian would have been a roar of "Why the bloody blazes didn't you _SAY _something?"

Part of Xander's justification for not revealing all back then was that he simply wasn't in the best shape for it. Lying in his hospital bed, every bone aching and his head feeling giddy not just from the concussion but also from all the drugs given to him at the emergency room he'd been carried to by Buffy from the school, Xander had stammered and stuttered his story about what had happened to him to Giles in the private room the hospital had given the injured teenager. The narration had been interrupted a few times for Xander to throw up, particularly at the more gruesome memories. The older man at the side of the bed had patiently held the bowl for Xander to be sick in, and then he'd handed the boy an handkerchief to wipe his mouth, with the offhand comment that the teenager could permanently keep it, if he would be so kind.

At the end of the story, Xander was fading fast, and he only managed to blurt out a rather vague question, "What do we do, Giles, about everything - Flutie, the Pack, Hyena, what she tried?"

Dolefully shaking his head, Giles had then firmly informed the young man in his bed that he and the others of the Scooby Gang would deal with it, researching what they could and asking for advice from the Council and anyone else who could help. Xander, on the other hand, only had to rest and recover. A note from the librarian would do for sick leave from school, though Giles hesitated, to then uncomfortably ask if the teenager wanted his parents to be informed of his status and location.

A faint but extremely bitter, "No, they won't even notice," came from Xander, just before he passed out.

Sighing, the Englishman arose from his chair by the hospital bed, to stare at the sleeping features of one of the bravest people he'd ever known, and then he gingerly patted several times the bandaged shoulder that seemed to be the least-injured portion of Xander Harris. Afterwards, Rupert Giles quietly took his leave.

The next morning wasn't one of the most delightful of his life for the son of Tony and Jessica Harris. To avoid the possibility of an overdose, he wouldn't get an extension of his painkillers until noon, and while trying to divert himself from how much his toenails were throbbing, Xander was inside his head, disbelievingly regarding how Hyena was in her cage and making sounds that suggested she really wanted to eat the whole world. In the next moment, the boy heard a girl's sharp voice in the tone of a predator much more dangerous than any Primal spirit that had ever existed. "iXander!/i Pay attention when I'm talking to you!"

Blinking back to awareness in the real world, Xander realized with absolute horror that Buffy Summers was standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at his face with a mixture of annoyance and concern on her own features. Right after that, he lost it.

A very bewildered Buffy shortly found herself sitting on the sit of the now-upright hospital bed, comfortingly embracing a sobbing and babbling Xander leaning against her and pitifully apologizing for his attempted rape of her while under the Hyena's influence. Not knowing what else to do, Buffy soon started telling Xander over and over that she forgave him, it wasn't his fault, and nothing bad had happened that would end their friendship, so she'd stay with him as long as it took for him to feel better. Buffy patiently waited for Xander's tears to turn into sniffles (never knowing she was the only person besides Willow and Jesse to see him cry since he was six), and then she gently pressed him back against his pillow and returned the bed into its flat position.

Stepping over to the bathroom of the private room, Buffy came out with a hand-towel and a paper cup of water. She handed Xander the towel to wipe his face, and then she passed over the cup for the boy to thirstily drink. Xander gave both used items back to Buffy, who put these on a side cabinet, and she sat down on the chair next to the bed, with the girl then determinedly talking.

Even for Sunnydale, what had happened at the high school and the zoo couldn't be entirely hushed up, though this time the normal excuse for the recent horrific events of 'gangs on PCP' seemed fairly plausible. The Pack had been taken away into psychiatric custody, the remnants of the bodies of the zoo warden and Principal Flutie had been removed, and the vice-principal was now the head of the shocked school. Since that elderly educator was just a few months from retirement, it was clear they'd be getting a new principal soon.

Xander was beginning to relax during this innocuous conversation, until Buffy abruptly bestowed upon him the evil eye and then stiffly informed the boy that during Giles' earlier report to herself and Willow that passed on what Xander had told the older man, exactly what had happened in the classroom between the Sunnydale High students hadn't been specified, just that it had wound up with Buffy winning their fight and then taking him to the hospital. So, the Slayer demanded, did Giles know and decide to keep his lips zipped, or did-

Cringing back in his bed sheets, Xander looked down in absolute mortification, mumbling that he'd been too embarrassed to tell Giles, and that it was totally Buffy's decision on what to do next. If she wanted, he'd spill his guts to everybody she thought had to hear his story - Giles, Willow, her mom, the cops - and take his deserved punishment.

After a few silent moments, Xander finally dared to lift his gaze, to then see Buffy enigmatically eyeing him. In the next instant, moving with superhuman speed, the blonde girl by the bed leaned forward to kiss Xander on his cheek, while also wrapping her arms around his chest to give him a Slayer hug. From previous personal experience, the teenage boy normally had his breath crushed out of him before from this exact kind of embrace, which happened again, only this time to ribs that had been walloped by a desk just yesterday, so now the young man's entire world faded into white-hot pain for an endless period as Xander used every bit of his will to keep from screaming in agony into Buffy's ear.

As she pulled back and stood up by the bed, Buffy looked down at Xander's tear-filled eyes and smirked, "It was sweet of you to offer, which is why you got kissed. But, nothing happened, so nobody needs to know otherwise, got that? You keep your mouth shut, or I'll do something to you even worse than what you just went through, Alexander LaVelle Harris!"

"Yes, ma'am," was croaked in a very humble tone from the student with the unfortunate middle name.

A very satisfied Buffy Summers now beamed at the boy lying in his hospital bed, and she chattered, "Well, it looks like all the weird stuff's over, at least until the next time, so I'll be going now, but Willow will be right up- What?" The girl broke off her happy babble, now frowning in distrust at a suddenly-pale Xander.

Making an instantaneous decision that there was no way in the world he was going to tell a nearly-assaulted Buffy that Hyena was somehow still inside his mind, even if that animal spirit was caged up, since the Slayer's immediate reaction to that little bit of awkward news would have been a prompt ripping off his skull from his neck with her bare hands and then drop-kicking that decapitated cranium outside through the hospital room window, Xander gave Buffy a weak smile and mumbled, "Uh, I thought that because Wils wasn't with you, she'd be along later."

Her suspicions lulled, Buffy smiled back, saying, "The hospital said only one of us at a time could visit you on your first day here. I won rock-paper-scissors, so it's her turn now." She then headed towards the room door, calling over her shoulder, "Mom and me will visit you tomorrow, so you need to say you got in the way of the football team at practice to explain how you wound up here."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" groaned Xander, glowering at Buffy, who'd stopped short, her hand on the doorknob, eyes glittering with mischief, as she listened to her friend grumble, "You couldn't have come up with something a little more dignified?"

Buffy looked thoughtful as she considered this, to slowly shake her head as the young woman decisively said, "No." Then, she stuck her tongue out at Xander, before disappearing out through the door, giggling all the while.

And so, that was the way things had worked out. Buffy remained silent about her classroom confrontation with Hyena. Willow and Giles never learned of this, and both also thought the whole animal possession incident was over with. Even Xander, who knew quite well it wasn't, considering what he still had inside his head, mistakenly believed that since G-man never said a word to him, there was nothing to worry about. The Scooby Gang then went on with their lives, joining together in their battle against the forces of the dark (which now seemingly included a really horrifying troll in human shape, bearing the name of R. Snyder, and loudly proclaiming its sole purpose in existence was the desire that the entire student body of Sunnydale High should suffer).

That just left one being.

In her enclosure after Xander's last visit, waiting long enough behind the bars of the cage to finally decide that Young-Cub wouldn't be back soon, Hyena idly scratched her left ear with her left rear paw, and then that animal spirit got to her feet and loped along the African savannah for several miles, placidly sniffing the familiar smells of her homeland. As the queen of the plains roamed her enormous domain, the familiar spine-chilling sounds of a Hyaenidae's laughter started to ring throughout the air, with actual humor present in this sound made by Hyena.

Young-Cub might know a thing or two, getting her in this cage and keeping her there, but Hyena had learned a few little things herself during her long existence. It had been the merest trifle to change the inside of her confinement to suit her wishes, making it a truly comfortable place to await whatever would be decided between herself and Young-Cub.

Soon enough (though there was time only in this place if actually desired), Hyena came to her den, slipping into this small cave inside a wrinkled fold of the land, and dropping to the hard dirt floor with a whoofing sigh, as she curled up and rested her muzzle against her haunch. As Hyena began to doze, she contemplated the latest events.

Young-Cub had just watched again, not coming closer or doing anything else before going away. Judging by the last few times, it might be a while before it happened again. Well, what of it? Hyena was patient, as a proper predator should be, willing to wait as long as necessary.

After all, this little monkey whose mind she was trapped inside would someday die, as did all things of flesh in this world, freeing Hyena to go back to her beloved astral realm instead of what small portion of it she managed to create here. It might happen sooner than she expected, considering the place Young-Cub had his den was a Hellmouth.

Hyena's muzzle wrinkled in a soundless snarl. Just about the only thing she would ever grudgingly thank Young-Cub for was the fact that his cage kept the smell of that Scar-On-Home from leaking into her lair. She had also reluctantly accepted to herself that perhaps her sudden appearance upon that hated bond to other badlands had influenced her behavior, making her act like she hadn't since she'd been a cub herself, all teeth and glands and no brains. No wonder she'd wound up in Young-Cub's trap. The only good thing to come of this whole disaster was the savage satisfaction of feeling through her fading link with the Pack their devouring alive of that arrogant monkey who'd dared to summon her.

Her?

Summon…Her?

Summon…Hyena?

SHE WAS HYENA! SHE RULED THE LAND! SHE ATE WHOLE SWARMS OF SMELLY, BAD-TASTING MONKEYS IN ONE GULP!

A deep growl produced echoes throughout the entire den, with to a flash of yellow/green light shining from the slits in Hyena's nearly closed eyes. After a few moments, the animal spirit got herself under control, to continue entering her slumber while thinking about opportunities.

One more interesting thing about Young-Cub and his true-Pack dwelling right on top of this Hellmouth was that sooner or later, they would run into trouble. Trouble that might be serious enough so that Young-Cub would be forced to free Hyena and then submit to the possession in order to gain the powers of that animal spirit to protect his true-Pack. After so long imprisoned in her cage, that possibility had began to truly….intrigue Hyena.

The fact was, she'd started to develop a reluctant respect for Young-Cub once Hyena had calmed down enough to actually reflect upon the events that had wound up with her trapped inside this monkey's mind. He hadn't performed the insult of her summoning, after all, and it had evidently been pure accident that Young-Cub and those other monkeys had become possessed by Hyena, turning into a group living and hunting together. What confirmed that this had been some kind of mistake was that the newly created pack wasn't a true-Pack for Young-Cub. He'd already had a Pack, consisting of Pee-Fur, Sunset-Fur, and Older-Male, and when Hyena had tried to take over that Pack, Young-Cub had viciously fought her to win his mind's control back from the animal spirit, even up to the point when the monkey had interfered with Hyena during her battle with Pee-Fur. Which proved Young-Cub was willing to die for his Pack.

Hyena had to admire that.

So…what to do if Young-Cub set her free in his mind? The affront of this cage might not be so unforgivable, if he'd done it to safeguard his Pack. That monkey's mental punishment might be confined to a few bites, none of them all that deep, and a good stomping into the dust of the ground, followed by a pleasant, extended relieving of her bladder onto Young-Cub's head. After which, she'd certainly next do whatever she wanted, going back to her astral realm, or-

Young-Cub, dripping yellow liquid from one end, and covered with dirt and blood all over the rest of him, would then certainly come staggering up, still insisting on protecting his Pack no matter what happened to him and demanding Hyena take over his mind again and use her powers to protect those he loved. That little monkey didn't know when to quit.

In her den, a nearly-dozing Hyena had her lips curl back from her fangs in a delighted snarl. Perhaps…there might then take place, which hadn't occurred for so long…a True Joining? Not what Hyena had previously done before to Young-Cub, the total control of his body without care or thought to whatever damage might be done to the host's life, but instead something far more prized: a willingly-entered fusion of Hyena's spirit and powers with Young-Cub's mind and body, followed by him becoming the Alpha of his Pack.

It would be a fine Pack too, Hyena sleepily nodded with approval to herself, as she finally descended into slumber. Pee-Fur had been a superb fighter and she would pass this fierceness along to her cubs. Though, Young-Cub didn't seem to feel that way towards Sunset-Fur; perhaps she was a brood-mate? Well, that female and Older-Male were both clever, and in a world with Hellmouths and traps and arrogant monkeys, cleverness was not to be sneezed at. Still more females were needed for a proper Pack. There was the one Hyena had seen in Young-Cub's memories, and while the animal spirit didn't know all that much about female monkeys, Night-Fur had fine, wide hips and a large-enough set of nursing accessories that would certainly suckle a good many cubs.

Hyena then went to sleep, and she remained so for the next couple of months, until a ceremony in a small costume shop concluded with three shouted words:

"JANUS! SUME NOCTEM!"

* * *

Author's Note: While this whole story is an AU of the original Halloween episode, this specific chapter deals with a minor AU event that already occurred in an earlier episode. The basics of "The Pack" episode happened the same up to when Buffy hit Xander with the desk. Unlike in the original where that teenage boy was just knocked unconscious and locked up in the book cage, with the rest of the events of that program continuing, the main change in the new AU is that the Slayer used more force than before and gave Xander a concussion plus some serious all-over bruises, making Buffy have to quickly take her insensible friend to the local hospital, as the Pack members went after Flutie and then the zoo warden.


	6. Chapter 6

The wave of Chaos magic burst forth from the Halloween costume shop, sweeping through downtown Sunnydale first and changing several unlucky people there which had the misfortune to previously buy their holiday outfits from a very creepy Englishman. The spell continued its journey, to then pass through the suburbs of the small California city where it inflicted itself upon many more of its intended targets, including a number of children being escorted by one Xander Harris.

As these youngsters either became the characters to match their costumes or ran screaming in terror away from the newly-created monsters, their former guardian had his own problems. Xander had promptly crumbled to the sidewalk, ignored by all those in the vicinity fleeing those new fiends pursuing them, as the body and features of that young man began to change. A teenager's form now lengthened and broadened into that of a fully-grown adult, and Xander's face altered into an entirely different sly and shifty countenance that was very familiar to viewers of Fox Television.

However, while the Chaos magic was modifying Xander into Mayor Quimby, the spell discovered something else that had been imbued with Ethan Rayne's identifying enchantments laid upon the attire and other objects in his shop that would mark these as worn by those to have their personalities and bodies modified into their costumes' characters. The British mage had designated the sash Xander had brought from him, not caring further who or what that lad would be changed into on Halloween night. Unfortunately, Ethan had cast the identifier spell on all of what Xander had on him at that exact moment, including a dog-eared business card in that young man's wallet, signed by a certain politician.

If a spell could be thought to have an actual mind of its own, at that point the Chaos magic would have just shrugged, and then it carried out its ordered task of changing the bearer of the identifier spell, instantly transferring an individual from wherever they were and whatever they were doing in their original body, into a completely new body that had formerly contained a quite different person. The Chaos magic could do this across entire dimensions; getting hold of someone a few blocks away was not going to be any great problem.

In his office at City Hall, Richard Wilkins III was just starting to look up from his desk, only now reacting to the fact that someone had just set off the equivalent of a magical nuclear weapon in _his_ city, when the Chaos magic came calling. During all the years he'd been ruling Sunnydale, Wilkins had discreetly set up the most powerful wards possible around his workplace, powered by the life-force of thousands of human sacrifices, each and every one of them the salt of the earth, and in all that time, his protections had been more than adequate to defend him from any other mage's attacks.

The Chaos magic went through every single ward like a twenty-ton wrecking ball through a spider's cobweb, causing Wilkins to instantly disappear from his office, with the pencil the mayor had been holding in one hand dropping with a faint clatter onto that politician's desk.

In the meantime, Hyena had instantaneously gone from a deep sleep into full alertness, urged by hair-trigger predator reflexes that had brought the animal spirit from lying down in her den to standing stiff-legged, eyes blazing yellow/green, and jaws gaping to show every sharp incisor ready to rend and tear during anything that might happen next. Though, Hyena didn't quite expect what in fact did take place.

Above Hyena, not just the roof of the den and the rest of the entire African savannah she'd constructed, but also the mental cage created months ago by Xander to imprison her, winked totally out of existence, leaving behind a bare landscape of the mind that contained only herself, up to the point when some other person now abruptly materialized into this setting. If Ethan Rayne had somehow managed to learn about this, that mage would have started laughing uproariously at how his spell of disorder had just arbitrarily placed someone in their new home right at the exact location which a teenager had absently called 'the place for the dangerous stuff.'

Hyena didn't care; every fiber of her being instead shrieked: INTRUDER! INTRUDER! An interloper was in _her_ territory! In a soundless rush, the animal spirit dashed forward in her frenzied charge, too enraged to make the slightest sound as her maniac gaze held steady upon the exposed back of that monkey standing there, ignorant of the doom about to descend upon it.

Richard Wilkins III looked around in disbelief. Somehow, he'd been transported into someone's mind. How? Why? Was this some kind of attack? At that last thought, Wilkins stiffened in anger, and he lifted his hands, with mystical lightning beginning to crackle along the palms of his hands, ready to be used at once against anybody who'd done this. His immediate willingness to resort to violence was the only thing that saved him then and there, as his quick response also brought him the slightest flicker of motion from the corner of the mayor's eye.

Wilkins' bodily flinch that desperately turned into a hasty spin on his feet saved him from being entirely hamstrung, as Hyena's vicious snap of her jaws as she rushed past the man only ripped away a good chunk of Wilkins' left calf instead of taking off his whole leg. As he screamed in agony, the mayor still managed to take aim at what had attacked him and which was now twisting around in another rush, firing from both hands lightning bolts that smashed into that insane animal.

Hyena was bowled off her feet, rolling over several times along the ground, as she howled in her own searing pain. Still, once she came to a stop, the animal spirit staggered upright, despite being terribly wounded, including most of the right side of her body burned down to the bone and her right front leg completely blown off. It didn't matter; she was going to kill that monkey and feast upon his entrails, so Hyena charged again in an immense leap using all the force of her hind legs, sailing through the air right at her foe.

Once he'd fired his magical bolts, Wilkins had dropped to his knees and clutched with both hands his mangled left calf, hurriedly muttering healing spells while he frantically gathered up his Hellmouth-taken powers for a quick exit. _Anywhere _would do, away from this place and that damned dog or whatever it was! Again, a flicker of motion caught the mayor's eye, and he looked up in utter horror at what was coming right at him. Wilkins barely had enough time to bring his hands back around in front of him, lifting these up and firing another brace of lightning bolts that slammed into his opponent in mid-air.

Unfortunately, Wilkins had been both a fraction too slow and too low, hitting Hyena in her lower chest instead of right in the face, so that animal spirit was still alive and moving when she collided full into Wilkins' own chest, knocking that man over flat on his back and having Hyena land directly onto his torso. She instantly took full advantage of this, as her muzzle gaped open and then snapped shut on Wilkins' left forearm, as jaw muscles that could crush rhinoceros bones effortlessly severed the man's limb.

An ear-splitting shriek of anguish came from the mayor, as the animal that had just bitten off his arm now let go of the pieces, to begin wriggling and clawing its way up his body, as that thing's mouth opened wide, drooling blood and saliva, it's yellow/green eyes brightly glowing as it stared at the ultimate prize, his throat. Barely able to move from his injuries, a despairing Wilkins did the only thing he could think of. If he couldn't survive this, at least he'd damn well kill the animal that killed him. Pulling up every remaining bit of his magical powers, a ball of blazing blue-white energy formed in his right palm, and as Wilkins felt the scorching breath of his foe on his face, he looked right into the snarling features of the animal lunging at his gullet.

Screaming his own rage at dying such a stupid death after all he'd done in his long life, at the moment he felt teeth rip into him, Richard Wilkins III lifted his right hand and then he slapped his right palm against the skull of the beast that had just torn out his throat, grimly detonating his ultimate annihilation spell.

In the mental landscape of a teenager, all of the described activities above had taken place in less than a second, and in the real world of the Halloween night in a small California city, a man's body lying on the sidewalk abruptly convulsed once, violently enough to risk tearing muscles and breaking bones, until this person dressed in a blue suit then fell limply back onto the ground, and now breathing shallowly and with his eyes closed, the slack features of Richard Wilkins III showed themselves to be unseeingly gazing upwards into the darkness, as Chaos reigned in Sunnydale.


	7. Chapter 7

He was lying on his back, his shoulders rubbing against hard concrete, and Xander's head felt like Buffy had been enthusiastically practicing her Slayer kicks upon that aching part of his body, sending it bouncing around the part of the library where she and Giles did their training. Gingerly, the man in the blue suit lifted his right hand, and still keeping his eyes closed, he cautiously patted the top of his skull several times. Despite the constant throbbing of his head in time with his heartbeat, it seemed to be intact, from what he could feel under his cropped hair-

Instantly freezing in horror, Xander mentally screamed to himself, *_What the hell happened to my hair?_*

The teenager's eyes now opened wide in pure panic, as his fingers frantically felt for his normal haircut to no avail, with only the grim discovery of that he'd evidently just been attacked by a mad barber obsessed with giving his victims a receding hairstyle. Uttering a despairing groan, Xander now miserably wiped his hand down his features, and he once more became absolutely still, as the high school student experienced an even bigger shock.

His whole face felt wrong.

Jerking away his hand from his countenance, Xander stared in utter disbelief at what was at the end of his arm. Those fingers….weren't his, being longer and thicker, with a minor scar or two, and most worryingly of all, his fingernails were neatly trimmed and manicured instead of being casually pared by whatever was on hand - a kitchen knife, the library scissors, a pen nib - as normally done by that teenager.

Xander cautiously lifted his hand back to his face, to explore equally carefully what was there instead of what _should_ have been there. Finally, a truly gloomy announcement of "Oh, fuck" was now made, with Xander's spirits plummeting even further at the manifestly different sound of his voice. Not entirely sure if it was worth it, Xander rolled over onto his side and then he charily got to his feet.

Still looking down at his maybe-a-size-bigger shoes, Xander despondently noted that the ground seemed to be a few more inches further away than before, until the teenager at last straightened up and glanced around. There was nobody else in the vicinity of the man in the blue suit standing on the sidewalk, but there was a car parked at the side of the street just a few steps away. A very doleful Scooby Gang member slowly slouched over and peered at his reflection in the car windshield, with there being enough illumination from a nearby streetlight to show that Xander Harris now perfectly resembled Richard Wilkins III.

Just before he could fully express his opinion and maybe a few tears about once more being the Hellmouth's number one butt-monkey on this Halloween night, Xander's attention was abruptly diverted by something else that was equally normal for that teenager currently in someone else's body.

From a clump of bushes at the side lawn of the house he was standing before on the front sidewalk, a squat green demon wrapped in fur rags burst from its hiding place, howling its war-cry as the scaled monster rushed right at its prey, taloned hands clutching while held in readiness to rip and tear tonight's victim. It covered half the distance between itself and Xander in a single instant, and in the very next moment, it surely would have been upon that teenager, instead of running head-first into the car, producing a deep dent in that automobile's side, and rocking the entire vehicle on its tires.

That ridiculous occurrence was due to Xander instantly reacting to being attacked, as his legs suddenly flexed into a backwards hop that carried him away from the car ten yards further down the sidewalk, lightly landing upon his feet as he crouched down, eyes glowing green/yellow, as Xander then wrathfully pointed an index finger at the demon staggering away from the dented car. A glowing white ball of energy the size of a marble emerged from this fingertip, shooting away from Xander right towards the demon, with the ball expanding itself along its journey so that when the spell struck the demon, it was big enough to completely engulf that dark creature, making a happy sizzling sound as the demon inside the energy sphere convulsed and then went limp, floating in the air even as it was now completely unconscious and contained by the spell.

There was a pause, as Xander slowly straightened up and then he lifted this index finger, tentatively holding it at eye level as he incredulously regarded it, all while making damn sure he didn't point this finger at himself. As something else abruptly called for Xander's attention, he now suddenly looked down at his feet, and just as quickly he directed his gaze at the point where he'd been standing just a second ago, before he'd made a standing broad jump that was flatly impossible for any normal human, even one who was an Olympic athlete, to perform.

*Buffy could have done it, just like I could have, back when-* Xander now found his voice, uttering an horrified, "Oh, shiiiiit!" He hastily closed his eyes and went to a specific place in his mind. Frantically peering around a barren mental landscape, Xander now found out the really bad news. Hyena was gone, with no sign whatsoever of that animal spirit, or the cage Xander had managed to create inside his head to imprison her in a successful attempt to keep that Primal creature from taking over his body. Unfortunately, the disappearance of both meant that Hyena was at this moment undoubtedly free again and eager to once more wear Xander Harris like a second skin as she roamed around Sunnydale.

His terrified eyes wide open, a man in his blue suit standing on the sidewalk made jerkily shifting movements with his body, as if he were trying to jump away from himself in his alarm. Xander's growing panic was suddenly snuffed by an odd thought that seemed to come from nowhere. *Wait a sec. Hyena took over right away when she wanted the first time. Why the hell hasn't she done it again?*

Xander then once more suspiciously examined his finger that had fired the spell, which continued to float by the car, with the demon inside the glowing sphere still peacefully dozing away. *Plus, she never showed any signs of being able to do _that_ before. What's going on?*

Frowning thoughtfully, Xander returned to his mindscape, only to discover something he'd been too apprehensive to notice a few moments ago. During all his previous visits to check that Hyena was still in her cage, he'd come to take for granted the faint tickle in the back of his mind that was Hyena's awareness, a mental signal that she was still safely confined in his head while her Primal spark glowed in confirmation of her existence. It didn't hurt or feel bad, and Xander had become used enough to this so that he eventually stopped paying attention to it. Now that he had calmed down sufficiently to concentrate, Xander felt the absence of this mental signal, and he disbelievingly drew the correct conclusion.

*She's…gone?*

Shaking his head skeptically, Xander noted to himself, *Well, if that happened-* (he felt an odd pang of loss) *-why'd I still manifest her? Not to mention that magic trick-* As he continued thinking his questions, Xander absently reached out with his mind, searching for any trace of Hyena left in his brain as automatically as his tongue would have examined a sudden cavity forming at the side of a tooth in his mouth, and a totally unexpected event occurred, entirely unsolicited as in both cases, and resulting in a serious shock to that human.

He became Hyena. Not the Primal, the animal spirit herself, the bloody-tooth-and-claw female personality that was obsessed with Pack and territory.

Instead, Xander took into himself Hyena's powers and memories, effortlessly slipping these on as his senses abruptly expanded for him to smell, see, and hear far better than before, and the rest of his body started to feel lighter than a feather as his nerves, muscles, and bones magically shifted into readiness for particularly intense levels of activity. There was no overwhelming rush of sensations as had happened the first time Xander had been possessed by Hyena. Wonderingly, the teenager thought, *It's like…it's normal. I'm me, not her…but it feels like I'm being fed nonstop instructions on how to control and use all this. I don't need to think about it, I can just do it without having to train.*

The man with glowing green/yellow eyes stared around the neighborhood, seeing everything in his gaze both with his mystical and material sight, as Xander continued to examine the newfound abilities bestowed upon himself. After several more moments, a sudden grimace appeared on Xander's face, showing he'd just come across Hyena's memories. It was like watching all at once an Animal Planet documentary that covered each and every possible incidents in the existence of a magical African mammal. The only thing keeping Xander from promptly losing his lunch was that sense of detachment provided by the documentary feel of Hyena's life. It wasn't happening to him, he was just an observer during all that animal spirit experienced in her mystical lifespan: creation, learning, possessing, hunting, stalking, killing, eating, roaming, fighting…dying?

Shocked, Xander watched in his mind's eye how Hyena had battled to the death with Richard Wilkins III.


	8. Chapter 8

Xander was seated on the curb, his new form easily resting in that position even if it was really, really old (well, older than Giles, anyway), as he perched his elbows on his knees and then the teenager dropped his head into his hands. He tried not to flinch away from all the strange sensations he was feeling inside someone else's body, to instead start contemplating how one Xander Harris' life had just gotten truly weird, even for the Hellmouth.

Here he was, on Halloween night, with his original mind, also having the powers of an animal spirit that had passed these onto him (probably because Hyena just felt like laughing her ass off), and for the joke's punchline, he was now stuck inside the body of the town mayor, who'd turned out to be a wizard or a magician or some other kind of spellcaster, all while keeping this a secret from everybody in Sunnydale before that guy had been killed by the Primal spirit sharing Xander's brain. The high school student knew damn well he was going to be blamed for that somehow.

Glumly forecasting a future of being yelled at by a lot of people, Xander tried to distract himself by wondering exactly how Mayor Dick had picked up all those major mojo chops. In the next instant, he received the dreadful answer. Just as Hyena's complete memories had previously presented themselves to Xander in their full inhuman behavior, that person now got all of Richard Wilkins' recollections of an extended lifetime well beyond a normal human, including every single atrocity that man had committed in his overriding purpose to accomplish his desired objective.

Abruptly twisting his body to the left, Xander entirely emptied his stomach while performing a genuinely impressive feat of projectile vomiting, sending out his last few meals a good distance away onto the patch of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb next to himself. Coughing and spitting, Xander tried to wipe away from his mind the horrific events he'd just witnessed. It was even worse that what he'd seen in Hyena's memories. At least that animal spirit had killed simply to defend herself or for other needful reasons. Wilkins had ruthlessly murdered multitudes just because he was working towards-

Gagging, Xander managed to get out the words, "He wanted to turn into a giant snake? Didn't that guy ever read the Evil Overlord List?"

That last statement was truly lacking in Xander's normal cheerful humor, as that teenager again felt his stomach spasm and he heaved up a trickle of bile, leaning to his left to spit this onto the ground. More spitting was done to try to get the taste out of his mouth, as Xander absently reached out with his left hand, to rip away a clump a grass, and then he crammed this handful of greenery into his mouth. Just when he started to chew on his unexpected repast, Xander abruptly regained his senses, disbelievingly hacking out his mouthful of grass and then starting to claw at his protruding tongue with his fingers to get any remaining flakes off.

When he'd finally finished, Xander spat a few more times to make sure everything was gone, only then realizing he'd just tapped into Hyena's memories of cleansing her mouth by snatching up a mouthful of plant life and vigorously chewing on this. Smacking his lips, Xander grudgingly admitted this had worked. The sweet taste of the grass had overcome the vile flavor recently in his mouth from throwing up, but the teenager still wasn't a happy camper.

"Like I really want or need what both of those trespassers remember," groaned Xander to himself. Beginning to shudder in reaction to the last few moments, Xander edged his seated behind along the curb away from his discarded stomach contents, glancing to his right in a forlorn hope for a distraction from his troubles. The young man in an older body now blinked at indeed seeing something to divert his attention.

The globe of white energy that had engulfed the demon during its attack upon Xander was still there, floating in the air while the spell continued holding inside itself the slumbering creature-

*The Orb of Confinement.*

"Yurk!" Xander wildly looked around himself, not seeing anyone who'd just said that odd sentence- No, a gulping Xander mentally corrected, he hadn't heard that; it had just popped up inside his head, to be sensed directly by his mind. He didn't need three guesses to know who'd just provided that matter-of-fact comment, and Xander now flinched at the possibility of Richard Wilkins the first, second, and third suddenly coming back to life in his head.

After a few terrified moments of waiting for whatever would happen, Xander nervously regarded the energy globe, to then again sense the unemotional statement: *The Orb of Confinement.*

"Yeah, I got that," muttered Xander under his breath. Hesitantly, the teenager then tried to directly contact whomever or whatever was doing that in his mind: *Uh, could you be a little more specific- Guh!*

Instantly laid out in his brain was the named spell, including every bit of information on how to create, maintain, and terminate the invoked enchantment, its purpose, and whatever else any wizard needed to know about casting this piece of magic. Wilkins' memories then began to inform Xander on the exact price that politician had paid to learn about the Orb and what he'd done with it, with the teenager hastily rejecting those gruesome reminiscences, something that had become much easier. The son of Tony and Jessica Harris had more than enough practice of mentally thrusting aside unwanted recollections in his own life.

Instead, Xander now thoughtfully regarded the Orb of Confinement. The way he'd learned about it from whatever part of Wilkins that was faintly lurking around in his mind had strangely reassured Xander. That politician's presence was kind of like how Hyena's essence currently felt in his brain. Both were…weakened, diminished, listless. It was like comparing a faded black-and-white photo with the real, full-color, living being.

Trying an experiment he'd just thought up, Xander said aloud, "Twinkies." The sudden gush of saliva in his mouth was more than familiar, as the teenager beamed with relief. He next called up Hyena's memories, with the word of the Hostess cake once more spoken. The only reaction Xander got from that animal spirit's residue was a vague sense of mild dislike over any kind of food that wasn't warm and bloody meat. Shrugging, Xander tried again with Wilkins, only to get from that remnant of the politician faint disapproval of such an unhealthy snack.

An extremely relieved Xander Harris breathed, "Yeah! Nobody but me in the driver's seat, and those two are like, um, talking books on tape, or, I dunno, a location device saying where to go and how to get there."

Nodding in satisfaction, the teenager started to lift his right hand to scratch the side of his head, only to halt this action when his fingers were at eye level. A slow grin appearing on his face, Xander then pointed his index finger at the Orb of Confinement, and did exactly what Wilkins had just told him.

There was an odd, inward surge in his body, and the white globe of energy instantly flew towards Xander, with this sphere contracting in size down to the width of a marble when it finally touched the tip of his finger, immediately vanishing into thin air. Xander then felt another odd sensation, like a cool streak of fire inside his hand that zipped right up his arm into his chest, where a warm glow then spread throughout his entire torso.

However, he'd only paid partial attention to this, since the Orb had left behind its prisoner when that spell had returned to its caster. Xander watched in sudden alarm as the insensible demon that had been hanging in the air now dropped limply to the ground, falling forward to land right on its face, and bouncing, once.

"Ooops!" Xander choked, guiltily looking around to see if anybody had witnessed that little mistake. His anxious gaze returned to the demon still on the ground, worriedly expecting it to at once wake up, leap to its feet, and go right for Xander's throat.

The demon let out a burbling snore, and continued its nap.

Wincing with relief, Xander chided himself, "Be careful, you bozo! You might have the mojo, but it doesn't mean you can use it right now as well as those two could!* A sheepish gleam in his eye was followed by an half-ashamed, half-gleeful intonation of a classic comic book line: "With great power comes great responsibility." Xander then went on to snicker, "But there's got to be ways to have lots of fun with this!"

A strangely-youthful grin now appeared upon a mature man's face for several moments, until his features slowly changed to become more serious. *Before all that, there's a question that needs to be answered: What the hell happened in the first place that got me in this body?*

Xander then quickly scanned the memories of both Hyena and Wilkins during tonight's events, with the teenager becoming really concerned about one specific recollection by the politician.

Why had Wilkins sensed there was something very wrong in the city of Sunnydale right before he'd been yanked out of his office in City Hall?


	9. Chapter 9

Xander stood on the sidewalk in the Sunnydale night, scratching the back of his head in puzzlement, not sure at all where to start on finding the answers to his sudden change of identity. His face brightened as a thought suddenly struck him: *Giles!* That Watcher could certainly offer an helpful suggestion or two, delivered in his classy British accent, once Xander finally managed to convince that man his caller wasn't playing some kind of practical joke on him, announcing he was Xander Harris while speaking in someone else's voice on the phone.

*Right,* Xander nodded to himself in relief. Find a phone, call Giles at his apartment, and set up a research party there or at the high school library, while also gently breaking the news to the Englishman concerning a few other minor things, like the wizard Mayor of Sunnydale, Hyena, and about last Monday, when Xander had missed lunch and sneaked into the library to swipe Giles' tuna fish sandwich. Hey, if that man had actually wanted to keep his meals out of the hands of starving high school students, he should have found a better hiding place than the top of the furthest bookshelf at the back.

Not really paying attention to the fact that he was sniggering to himself in a remarkably hyena-like cackle, Xander started to head down the street, away from the demon still sleeping on the sidewalk. After a few steps, something caught Xander's eye, a small object resting upside-down on the front lawn of a house. *Oh, so that's where it was,* he thought vaguely, as Xander stopped by this and then bent over to pick up Grandpa Harris' hat that had fallen off earlier during all the excitement.

In the middle of this action, Xander abruptly froze as he drew in a deep breath through his nose. After a couple of moments, Xander straightened up while absently putting on the hat and at the same time wondering what that oddly-familiar smell was. The mild breeze was blowing towards him from back up the street, where the demon was lying on the ground…

Xander slowly turned around and he consideringly eyed that small, sleeping fiend. Now that he was actually paying attention, the fur wrappings the demon was wearing also seemed kind of familiar, like he'd seen them before not all that long ago- Xander's thoughts instantly broke off in absolute horror as he stared at the dozing demon, and then he dashed forward in a frantic run that ended in a skidding halt by the unearthly being. Staring down at the resting creature, an appalled Xander had his stomach sink right down to his wingtips when he finally identified the attire the demon was clad in to be exactly the same as the Halloween costume worn by one of the kids in his charge tonight.

Trying not to be sick again, Xander couldn't avoid thinking the awful question, *Was he eaten, or-*

"Hey! What're you doing there?"

Xander's head snapped up, as he stared at the man standing in the open front doorway of his house and looking out at the other man at the sidewalk, next to something very strange lying on the ground. Not surprisingly, the first thing through Xander's mind was the exasperated snarl, *I _really_ don't need this!*

Without actually thinking about it, Xander's left arm shot out to point directly at this onlooker, and his field of view abruptly changed, as his sight shifted from material into mystical, with the entire scene now appearing as if there was a faint, glowing mist in the air. Seemingly of their own volition, his mouth spoke a single word, "Forget!" At the same time, the mist hanging in the air right in front of his fingers pointing at the man now churned, as if by an unexpected gust of wind, and then this disturbance in the haze now shot directly at the witness, to splash against that man's face.

An aghast Xander then had his vision change back to normal, with the mist completely disappearing, just in time for him to see the householder's face turn slack, as that person now stepped back and gently closed the front door, with the last thing Xander noticed before this being the absolutely blank gaze of the man he'd just bespelled.

His left arm was still pointing at the shut door, and Xander now hastily dropped that limb to his side, all while disbelievingly muttering to himself, "Sunnydale Syndrome… I saw and _used_ Sunnydale Syndrome! So, Mayor Dick had something to do with-"

By his feet, a sleepy growl was uttered.

At that specific moment, Xander was approaching his breaking point, so that young man could be truly forgiven for instantly leaping straight up in his panic and also uttering a little-girl shriek of pure fright, all while his head achieved the twenty-foot mark at the apex of his Hyena-powered jump.

Coming down to nimbly land on his feet, Xander promptly pointed his right hand at the prone demon, ready to blast away with the mojo stuff to the max, yessir, if that loathsome creature of the night tried anything. No, wait, maybe his left hand would work better. He hastily dropped his right hand and pointed with the other at the abominable minion dwelling in the darkness. Nah, go back to the right hand. No, the left. Um. How about together?

As he held his trembling hands ready for action, aiming both at his target, this vile miscreant from the lower depths of hell burped, sighed with relief, and continued its siesta. In contrast, Xander shuddered with disgust, and he lowered his arms, glaring at the demon. The teenager moodily wondered if there was a way to find out what had happened, even if he wasn't all that enthusiastic-

*Scry.*

"Which means _what_?" growled Xander under his breath, not caring if he actually offended Wilkins or whatever in his head that had just uttered that comment, to then next in reaction to Xander's surly inquiry, provided several definitions of that word. While he certainly had no interest right this second in predicting the future using a crystal ball, Xander's mood perked up slightly at learning about magical scans.

Cautiously following the directions provided in his mind, Xander lifted up the sleeping demon from the ground by a spell that left it limply dangling in a vertical slouching position in mid-air. Still maintaining the first spell, Xander now cast another that caused a faint blue glow to develop around the demon and right after, the outer form of this creature faded, to reveal a ghostly image of a sleeping child at the inner core of the being.

Xander's mouth dropped wide open at seeing this, to then abruptly close and widen into an ecstatic grin when he recognized that kid as one of his charges Snyder had stuck with him hours ago back at the high school. In his relief, Xander started to babble, "So, how'd he get in there, and can I do something to get him out?"

*Transformation spell.*

Blinking at this information from Wilkins' memories, Xander tentatively muttered, "Like…me? Like I became the mayor? Him and me, we were transformed into our new bodies? But…why? Oh, never mind! How can I change us back?"

*Scry.*

Beginning to feel a little worried, Xander tried the scanning spell again, with a bit more power as directed. When he'd finished, the fur wrappings of the demon's costume suddenly blazed with eldritch energies, pulsing and throbbing in waves of strange colors that made Xander's eyes hurt until he hastily looked away and toned down the spell. When he carefully glanced back, the costume seemed to be unchanged, leading to Xander's quick demand, "What the _hell_ was that?"

*Chaos magic.*

"Oh. Is that of the bad, or of the good? Yeow!" Xander yelped the last word, as a torrent of information poured into his mind. "Just give me the Reader's Digest condensed version!"

*Either. Both. Neither. Chaos has its own rules.*

If it had been possible, Xander would have then given his own brain a very suspicious stare. It seemed as if there had been the faintest trace of snarkiness in that reply. Vowing to think that over later, Xander took a deep breath, and commanded, "Well, anyway, let's do the mojo and change us back!"

There was a dead silence in Xander's mind.

After several anxious moments, a horrible feeling overtook the teenager, who managed to force out a question through suddenly-stiff lips. "Did Wilkins know how to use Chaos magic?"

Still no response.

"Show me any spells you have about Chaos magic!"

A minute later, a mature man was stomping around on the sidewalk while whacking hard the side of his right leg with the yanked-off hat clenched in his right fist and irately muttering to himself, "Yeah, like it was gonna be that easy! You're on the Hellmouth, buster, the place known far and wide as 'Never-give-Xander-Harris-a-break-land!' Gaaaahhhh!" At that last furious outburst, Xander now threw the hat to the ground and gave it a good kick, sending it flying into the night. As he glared after his discarded headgear, the high school student ground his teeth together for several moments, until warning twinges in his mouth gave notice of overstressed dental work.

Aggrievedly letting his jaws relax, Xander tried to think of something to distract himself from going into a real tantrum. Morosely cramming his hands into his pants pocket, the man looked down at his outfit, with his attention suddenly caught by a stray thought. *Hey, is there something about my costume that changed me, like that kid's costume changed him? I didn't pay all that much notice to what he was wearing before, but I think it was some kind of monster character, and I did dress up as the Mayor…* Becoming a bit calmer at this new line of consideration, Xander pulled his right hand out of a pocket and thoughtfully rubbed his chin, managing to ignore how differently this felt.

Making a quick decision, Xander then once again called up the scanning spell from his mind. Looking down at himself, Xander didn't see anything odd as he cast the spell upon himself. Frowning, the teenager upped the power of the spell a bit more, only to watch in shock as the sash with the word 'MAYOR' on it that he was wearing abruptly radiated the hurtful glow of Chaos magic.

"Ack! Ack! Getitoffoffoff!" babbled Xander as he frantically tore off the sash and tossed it away as hard as he could. Panting, the young man watched the sash flutter onto the lawn next to the sidewalk, until he then hastily brought up both hands to his features, rapidly touching his face in a sudden hope that was promptly dashed, as Xander still felt the older countenance of Richard Wilkins under his fingers.

Glumly looking at where his purchased strip of cloth on the ground yet shone from the dangerous enchantment, something else caught Xander's eye, from what he was wearing on his upper body. Glowing through the jacket was the faintest gleam of Chaos magic in the vicinity of that coat's front inner pocket. An anxious Xander quickly pulled open his jacket and thrust his right hand into that same pocket, to pull out what he'd just remembered was there, nervously holding this small object in his fingers.

As he stared at the business card of Richard Wilkins III illuminated by a spell of disorder, a very boggled high school student tried to make sense of things. *That kid's costume got the Chaos mojo, so it changed him into a demon. I got that sash to show people I was the Mayor, so that must have been what changed me. But…why is ithis/i showing off that bad mojo? I've had it for _years_, and it didn't do anything before! Not even last Halloween!* At that last thought, Xander's eyes narrowed, as he examined that bit of strangeness further.

*I…got the sash at that new costume shop. That kid got his costume from somewhere, and I can't ask him about it, where he got it. But…everything else I was wearing-* (Xander abruptly looked down at Grandpa Harris' formal suit) *-I got from home. This card is the _only_ other thing I had on me from when I went to that new costume shop!* Feeling very pleased at working things out, Xander sent into the night a beaming grin over his cleverness, until his delighted expression abruptly shifted into one of absolute horror, as he finally remembered something else.

Earlier, Buffy and Willow had brought their own Halloween outfits from the same shop run by that creepy English guy, who was probably the one responsible for making people change into their costumes. His friends were unsuspectingly wearing their holiday garments of a noblewoman and a ghost, right _now._


	10. Chapter 10

At any other time, it would have been indisputably attention-grabbing, even in the town of Sunnydale, whose inhabitants could ignore just about anything. You had a middle-aged man fully dressed in a formal blue suit except for being barefoot (the shoes and socks had been yanked off and tossed away), frantically running at highway speeds along the city streets, skinny tie madly fluttering over his left shoulder from the wind of his passage, eyes glowing bright green/yellow, and his head lifted up in the air to snuffle deeply in a desperate search for his friends' scent.

On this Halloween night, people had other, more serious concerns, since that runner wasn't actually trying to kill them, destroy their homes, and devour the family pets. As Xander dashed through the battle zones holding those individuals that had been changed into their costumed characters and the rest of the unaffected populace, with these latter persons usually fleeing for their lives, he watched with horror the anarchy around him, becoming even more anxious about Buffy and Willow as he kept on searching.

It didn't mean Xander avoided doing what he could to end the bedlam created tonight, but he never stopped in his hunt during his efforts to protect innocents. Still running at full speed, Xander cast many more Orbs of Confinement, exactly like the one he'd again laid on the first demon just before he'd taken off, against every single Chaos-affected person the teenager encountered. It didn't matter if they were heroes, villains, neutrals, or none of the above; there simply wasn't time to pick and choose. They all got targeted, and while white energy spheres swallowed up these now-stunned combatants, Xander additionally cast more spells hastily demanded from Wilkins' memories. Healing enchantments were laid upon anyone who was wounded, magically curing their hurts (thankfully, nobody had been killed yet). Mending spells put out fires, completely repaired anything that had been destroyed, and restored utility services to homes.

However reluctant he was to do so, Xander also repeatedly used the Sunnydale Syndrome spell at its strongest level. The innocent bystanders were directed by the firmest command possible to go home, and _stay_ there, all while forgetting that they'd had anything else besides a normal Halloween. Held prisoner in their magical globes, the insensible people, who'd had the bad luck to buy their costumes from a guilty someone who was really gonna regret that, were also zapped by Sunnydale Syndrome, ordering them to as well forget virtually all of tonight's events and remember only that they'd gone trick-or-treating, eaten all their candy, and then had headed for home, feeling a need for some Pepto-Bismol to settle their stomachs.

A last-minute thought had a loping Xander pointing back over his shoulder at the Chaos-affected, while putting upon them all a variant of the ignoring spell that would cause any passer-by wandering near those people to overlook the fact there were unconscious characters from decades of popular culture floating inside giant balls of glowing-white energy. Finally reaching a part of the suburbs where seemingly the disorder hadn't yet reached, Xander put on a little more speed in his Hyena-aided dash and he kept on sniffing the air. His heart leapt, as he smelled the faintest trace of a pair of very familiar feminine scents.

Absently waving his right arm while still casting the Sunnydale Syndrome spell in case somebody was looking out their window and witnessing how the mayor of the city was performing the totally impossible, a still-sprinting Xander devoted the remainder of his attention to what was really important. His nose locked upon the traces, the teenager zipped down the street, adroitly curved around a corner to run past more houses along a lane, and then-

Lifting his head to draw in an astonished gulp of air, Xander abruptly skidded to a stop, his bare feet taking no injury from this scraping slide along the street asphalt. Hastily spinning around, Xander scrupulously sniffed the atmosphere, beginning to trot back up along the lane as he did this. Coming to one specific house, Xander headed towards the sidewalk in front of this, still testing the air, until he came to a halt, disbelievingly looking around at the deserted area.

From what his nose was telling him, Buffy had been right here, escorting the kids in her charge, until while exactly in the middle of a step, a Slayer in a fancy gown had changed into a totally unfamiliar young woman in a fancy gown (he could smell the identical dry cleaning chemicals). Groaning to himself, "She got zapped, too," Xander prudently sniffed several times until the teenager was confident he'd memorized the stranger's smell. Hyena's memories assured Xander he could now track not-Buffy through anything but an actual thunderstorm with all its heavy rain. However, there was someone else that Xander was truly concerned about.

Backtracking Buffy's odor up to the corner of the lane, Xander's mood brightened a little when he smelled Willow. Apparently they'd separated here, with his Wils going down the other side of the street with her charges, from where Buffy had taken along her own kids, at least until the Slayer had been hit by the Chaos magic. Following the scent, Xander went back down the lane, until he stopped in utter horror after drawing in a routine sniff that told him what he really didn't want to know.

Absolute fear, panic, and terror had been abruptly felt here some time ago, with the corresponding scents of these emotions still hanging in the air, all produced by the children Willow had been looking after, who'd then scattered away in alarm from the exact spot where Xander was standing. His head frantically twisting as he both looked around and sniffed in total dread, Xander's attention was finally caught by an awful sight.

On the front porch of the house he was facing, a lady's black boot partially covered with a white sheet protruded past the end porch railing, with whomever was lying on the raised platform being hidden by the remainder of the railings.

A single bound across the entire lawn brought a terrified Xander right onto the porch, as he then froze, to stare down at the still body lying on the wooden deck. "No, no, noooo…," he pitifully moaned, his voice trailing off as Xander then noticed the familiar white sheet with a now-heartbreaking 'BOO' written on this with a magic marker.

Falling to his knees by the girl's body, Xander tremblingly reached out to the head covered by the hood of the ghost costume, and with the utmost care, he lifted the sheet back, to meet the sightless gaze and slack features of Willow Rosenberg.

After an unknown period of time, Xander found himself once more on his knees on the front lawn of the house, hands palm down on the grass and his fingers digging deeply into the ground, as the teenager then threw his head up towards the skies and he opened his mouth as wide as he could, not yet uttering a sound. His back to where his bested bud was lying, Xander felt the black ball of his grief expand in his chest, well past the capacity of his throat. Still soundlessly holding his mouth open as tears streamed down his cheeks, Xander continued to feel his pain grow, out through his skin and into the world, until this now actually affected his body in such a way that nobody would have ordinarily expected.

Without him noticing the slightest, Xander's fingers sunk into the earth were now pulled up, as these digits and the rest of his body began to slowly ascend into the air. Lost in his sorrow, Xander paid no attention whatsoever to this as he continued to rise, choosing to instead confront his heartbreak.

The very last person that had unreservedly loved Xander Harris was…dead. Willow. His Wils. His. Gone.

Eleven years, from kindergarten to high school, of knowing each other from children to teenagers, and never again a single moment more. He would never see her as a full-grown woman, a mother, a grandmother, in whatever future she might have had.

He knew her, all her moods, the faces she made, her walk, her smell, the sun shining through her auburn hair. He had felt her touching him, his face, his hands, his skin in fun and concern and anger and….love.

In the last few years, as his body had changed from boy to man, he looked at the girl by him with her own changing body, and wondered. But, there was also fear, and shame.

She was his friend, now and forever, and to risk that turning into something else meant the chance of ending their companionship, the single spark of tenderness shown to him that an abused boy huddled up against to keep his soul alive.

He was less than her, the worthless kid of two drunks, who had nothing to offer someone who was so smart and kind and gentle and amazing. Nothing but himself, to shield and guard a wonderful girl against anything and anyone that might hurt her, from a taker of crayons to the worst of the Hellmouth.

_*AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN DO THAT RIGHT!_*

Flinching from what he'd just screamed to himself in his mind, Xander then looked down at a Sunnydale that was spread across its entire locality several thousand feet below.

Xander's newly-acquired magic that had manifested itself when his emotions had overcome him now easily kept the teenager aloft in mid-air, with the young man grimly staring downwards. His heightened senses provided by Hyena's passing continued to effortlessly gather information, as he watched throughout the city flashes of light appear and heard muffled explosions, faint screams, and gunshots, all while Chaos continued to afflict his birthplace.

Someone…had done all this.

Someone…had invaded his territory.

Someone…had hurt his Pack.

Someone…was going to _pay._

Xander Harris once more opened his mouth, and this time, he howled all his grief and rage in an overpowering shriek for vengeance.


	11. Chapter 11

All over Sunnydale, various people reacted in their own different ways over hearing that anguished wail from the skies.

* * *

Madelaine Giroux jumped in fright while delivering a screech of terror (that lady's twelfth in the last five minutes, as calculated by her truly exasperated companion). As the eighteenth-century noblewoman looked around in dread, she whimpered, "We are lost! The wolf seeking his prey has just found me, as shown by that yell of triumph, and the vile beast shall soon appear and devour all of my virgin body down to the merest scraps!" The Chaos-affected young woman finished off that histrionic declaration with an expert hand-wringing.

Really wanting for her non-corporeal body to be able to actually pick up something big and hard so that she could hit Buffy with it, a ghostly Willow standing next to the brunette girl in the ornate gown irritably snapped, "Will you knock it off! The only wolf around here is in the Sunnydale zoo!"

"Alack! That foul creature has surely escaped from its cage and is hastening here for its next kill! Oh, whoever shall save me?"

A sudden evil gleam appearing in her eyes, Willow then sweetly said, "Well, in that case, don't you think you should start running for shelter? This way," she finished as the Jewish girl helpfully pointed down the street towards Buffy's house on Revello Drive.

Madelaine promptly picked up the skirt of her gown and dashed off, making good time for someone in a corset. As she followed along after, Willow somehow managed an annoyed sigh despite the fact the teenage girl was currently as insubstantial as the very air around herself, all while reflecting that she'd never thought it possible for someone to come along and immediately make the redhead loathe this person even more than that total bitch nicknamed Queen C of Sunnydale High, better known to one and all as Cordelia Chase.

* * *

This acknowledged young lady would have ordinarily smirked with pride at the recognition of her status at being the apex of the food chain at that California educational facility, except at this very moment a few streets away, Ms. Chase was running for her life away from something that boorishly wanted to reduce her tonight to something much further down that hierarchy, such as an actual tasty snack.

At her maximum speed, Cordelia was staying just a few steps ahead of her pursuer, some kind of Bigfoot monster or a human/dog crossbreed that had every inch of his exposed skin covered with thick hair, including a furry face that was excitedly slavering down his hirsute chin while flashing white fangs, and reaching out for the long, streaming tresses of the fleeing prey with his clawed hands that had just moments ago nearly managed to catch the girl and had instead reduced her cat costume to tattered shreds.

In the middle of their chase, the young woman and the monster heard the tormented howl coming from above, with both the hunter and the quarry reacting to this. Cordelia quickly glanced over her shoulder in the sudden hope that Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy would be distracted by this, with her eyes widening at seeing something much more advantageous than what she'd been praying for.

The canine creature that had been chasing her had now abruptly halted in his tracks, standing with his legs apart and shaggy arms dangling at this sides, to stare upwards, ears clearly pricked in wary alertness, as the beast's attention was clearly diverted by what he'd just heard. Pulling back his lips in a soundless snarl as he kept his head tilted back to ignore all else in his vicinity, the dogman's eyes narrowed as his jaws opened, about to return a howl of challenge, except what came out of that brute's mouth in the very next moment was something quite different.

In her place, virtually anyone else would have kept on running away, thanking their lucky stars that this potential murderer had unexpectedly lost his interest in killing them. Cordelia Chase wasn't anyone else. Without losing a step, that young woman rapidly curved around to run back at the Chaos-created combination of man and dog, carefully judging her strides, until when she was right in front of him and still rushing headlong at her top speed, Cordelia shoved down hard on her left leg, while at the same time bringing up her right leg with all the strength that years of cheerleading gymnastics had given her, culminating in an immense kick that ended with the top of her right foot smashing squarely into the exact center of that bastard's crotch.

Jo-Jo was actually lifted off his fuzzy feet, at once contorting into a fetal posture while in mid-air and moreover producing a whistling scream of pure male agony. Still occupied by his world of pain, the dogman crashed to the ground, his curled-up body not moving the slightest as he kept holding onto himself, and now also starting to whimper piteously.

Only a few steps away, Cordelia ignored all this, as she hopped up and down on her left leg a few times until the young woman then cautiously put her right foot down on the ground. Cordelia gave a triumphant smile as this action produced only a mild ache in that foot, instead of the stabbing pain signaling a more serious injury, such as a broken bone. But then, her savage kick had been cushioned by various bodily parts of that moaning dweeb sprawled on the ground, who now had those exact male parts lodged somewhere right below his tonsils. Okay then, it was time for the next stage.

A look of pure evil now appeared on Cordelia's beautiful features, as she purred at her vanquished enemy lying at the teenager's feet. "All right, fur-face, you've just been given a Level One punishment for wrecking my thousand-dollar, one-of-a-kind, made-especially-for-me, Halloween costume. Now, we'll start with the Level Two penalty for actually daring to attack me, which means you're really going to start suffering."

As a vengeful Cordelia irately stalked over towards him, her prone assailant then frantically started to wriggle away along the ground, his elbows and knees desperately pushing in a hopeless attempt to escape from the furious girl.

* * *

In a nearby park, Angel also heard the scream of suffering coming from on high, though it was a bit muffled and he couldn't see who had done that. Both consequences of this were due to his current location, high up in a mature oak tree, sitting on a thick branch and surrounded by concealing leaves. While he momentarily wondered about what he'd just heard, the attention of the vampire with a soul was diverted by another's call:

"Ruffertooooo, where are youuuuuuu? Here, boy! Come to Daddy!"

Worriedly peering down, Angel then hastily shifted his body to hide behind the trunk of the tree he was occupying, when he saw below, wandering among the other trees of the park, the very strange person the vampire had encountered just a few minutes previously.

Angel had no idea what had happened tonight that had caused the residents of Sunnydale to evidently go insane. He'd looked out from his Crawford Street mansion to witness the pandemonium caused by costumed characters heedlessly doing whatever they wanted, and the anxious vampire had left his dwelling to check on Buffy. As he headed towards her home, Angel had been forced several times to break up fights, assaults, and other violence done by some extremely odd people against normal humans. Not to mention the occasional attacks against the Irishman himself, which had been equally weird.

After a extremely exasperating scuffle against a six-foot white rabbit that continually shoved a full cereal bowl containing luridly-colored bits of breakfast food that didn't look particularly appetizing or healthy right into Angel's face, the vampire had shifted into his demonic form, with the fangs, yellow eyes, and ridged features, and he'd managed to scare off that ridiculous being, with the bizarre animal defiantly shouting, "Trix are for kids!" as it hopped away. Whatever _that_ meant.

Anyway, Angel had stayed in game face for the remainder of his journey, and this had clearly worked in frightening away any possible adversaries. It was only when Angel had been passing by the Sunnydale park that he'd once more been forced to step in on another Halloween character confrontation versus an ordinary human. This latter person had the misfortune to have been heading down the street in their car throughout tonight's chaos, and during his trip, the driver had been forced to suddenly slam on the brakes lest he run down somebody standing in the middle of the avenue. That pedestrian didn't feel grateful for the driver's courtesy at _all_.

Angel started trotting towards the stopped car, with the driver cowering inside, as the man standing in front of the vehicle bellowed an inarticulate war cry, drew with blinding speed one of the two swords he was carrying, and started maniacally hacking away with this weapon against the forward parts of that automobile. As the sword slashed against the car headlights, it shattered the glass and destroyed the inside bulbs to promptly darken these vehicle accessories.

That had been more than enough for the driver, who now shoved open his door, scrambled out of the car, and made speedy tracks back up the street as fast as he could. For some reason, this made the guy holding his sword really pleased, as he now whooped with triumph while addressing the parked car, "Hah, not so tough are you, you iron dragon? I've blinded you and made you puke up your last meal, and now it's time for you to breathe your last!"

Coming up behind this yelling idiot, Angel shouted at him, "Stop that! Will you just settle down? I need to tell you-"

Spinning around, the guy with the sword then froze for a moment, his eyes widening, as Angel now had a good look at him for the first time. Untidy hair held in place with a corded headband, a slightly goofy face with an enormous misshapen nose that resembled a crushed cucumber, wearing a dingy-yellow belted robe that was cut off at his upper thighs, along with a weapons harness draped diagonally across his chest which currently held a spare sword, and bare legs that ended in leather sandals.

Again with blurring swiftness, the guy drew with his left hand the shorter sword from his weapon harness, now holding in both hands what looked like razor-sharp katanas, and he at once charged right at Angel, all while bellowing, "DIE, DEMON!"

Oh. He was still in his demonic manifestation, Angel reflected, as he got ready to dodge that guy with the swords. Which shouldn't be all that difficult, what with his vampiric speed, right?

Several minutes later, still in his tree and hiding from that guy below who was now peeking under every bush in the vicinity while continuing to call for his pet, Angel shuddered at how close he'd come to death again, this time with the whole abrupt change from a solid, sentient body into a couple of pounds of ashes. Unhappily fingering the sword slashes in his leather coat, Angel shook his head in utter disbelief over his recent encounter with that other guy who'd done the utterly impossible.

Look, it went all the way back to the very first person the man in the oak tree had been, from Angel to Angelus to Liam, the drunken Irishman who'd accosted a pretty woman and then saw the flashing fangs of a female monster that had been the last living memory of a member of the upper classes. (Hey, his family had been out of commerce for two generations now, and they didn't speak about their horsetrader grandfather, no matter how rich he'd become. They _were _part of the aristocracy, damn your eyes.)

Anyway, Liam ihad/i been raised as a gentleman (even if it never quite took), which meant he'd been trained in swordfighting. After all, a properly cultured chap settled his disputes with other members of his social class with the proper weapon, or to be more exact, they fought duels with swords. Pistols were the lesser choice for Irish duelists at the time (a minor sword scar on the face was infinitely more fashionable, plus it really made the lasses randy). So, Liam did know which part of a sword to use, and he could hold his own in a fight with those weapons, even if he cowardly made sure to avoid this as much as he could.

Even when he'd become a vampire, and then got his soul back, Angel had occasionally used a sword, and he'd also seen others battle with those bladed weapons, with these combatants ranging in ability from average (and shortly dead) to very expert. The man that Angel had just faced on the Sunnydale street had been far beyond being skilled with edged steel than anyone the vampire had witnessed, heard of, or even believed possible.

What made it even stranger that the swordsman in his dirty robe hadn't just been the fastest human fighter Angel had ever seen, with those sword strokes, slashes, and thrusts dealt out as quick as lightning. Angel had barely dodged all the attempts made by his opponent to stick several feet of sharpened metal into the vampire. No, what had nearly ended that Irishman's unlife several times had been the supremely foolhardy fighting style used by the swordsman. 'Brawling' didn't even begin to cover it; that pugnacious man would and did do anything at all with his swords, no matter how stupid it was as long as it had a chance of working.

As he touched the shallow cut on his neck, Angel sitting on his tree branch had to admit there might have been an actual method in that man's madness. At the end, the vampire had been reduced to simple guessing, and he'd almost picked the wrong direction to duck. That had been enough for Angel; at the first opportunity after nearly losing his head, he'd jumped back, spun around, and desperately ran for his existence, with the sound of his pursuing enemy's swords swishing through the air uncomfortably close to the back of his neck putting an extra spring in Angel's step. That had probably saved the vampire. He'd managed to outrun the guy chasing him, getting ahead far enough to duck out of sight behind a tree in the park, and then jumping straight up to hide himself behind the leaves of this tree.

Carefully listening, Angel heard with relief the voice of his former opponent now coming from the opposite side of the park. Once the vampire had successfully hidden himself, that guy had seemingly lost interest, to instead start searching for his dog or cat or whatever. Good, he could now get out of this tree and continue to Buffy's house. Dropping from branch to branch, Angel at last landed on the ground, and standing before his tree, the demon with a soul instantly decided this minor situation wouldn't ever be shared with the Slayer, just as he'd never bothered to tell Buffy what rat blood tasted like, or come right out and confessed he hadn't been the one to give that young woman the kiss of life in the Master's cave. What Buffy didn't know wouldn't hurt her, and if the topic ever came up, well, Liam-that-was, like every son of the auld sod ever born, could effortlessly lie the truth out of Ireland.

Jogging down the street towards Revello Drive, Angel passed by the spot where his absurd meeting with that swordsman had taken place, and the vampire took a sniff of the air to make sure he'd recognize the scent of his adversary if there was ever the possibility of encountering him again. A few steps further on, Angel's face suddenly twisted in confusion, as he thought to himself, *Why do I smell cheese dip?*

* * *

In their locations among the streets of Sunnydale, Willow Rosenberg, Madelaine Giroux/Buffy Summers, Cordelia Chase, and Angel the vampire at that exact moment all had ringside seats for what an enraged Xander Harris, floating several thousand feet in the air above the city, now began to carry out.


	12. Chapter 12

In all his life, Xander Harris had never even been in an airplane before, so standing on emptiness several thousand feet high in mid-air above his hometown without any possible means of support would have ordinarily totally freaked out that young man. Not tonight, though. Instead, he was just _pissed_. No, he wasn't drunk, as that word would have been defined by those living in England, Australia, and New Zealand. Rather, right now, Xander was truly furious, and he was about to start things off that would surely end up with someone bending over to kiss their ass goodbye.

Floating over Sunnydale, the tie of his good suit gently flapping in the mild breeze, Xander closed his eyes, while at the same time lifting his arms from his sides, to hold them horizontally at shoulder height, palms facing outwards, as if he was about to embrace the air itself. Feeling his mouth abruptly go dry over what he was about to carry out, Xander quickly brought up an image in his mind of Willow, and as he mentally regarded the smiling face of his redhaired friend that had died tonight, the teenager's will stiffened, and he then did as Wilkins' memories meticulously instructed him.

Xander Harris called up the power of the Hellmouth.

From the very center of the Boca del Infierno buried under the Sunnydale High School, and stretching outwards from this dimensional opening between levels of realities, across the entire surface of the small California city, an immense wave of magic burst forth, ethereal in its passage in that nothing seemed to be affected by its existence, and then invisibly rising upwards into the skies to where it had been summoned.

Xander jerked once in his spot in mid-air, as the first of the magic crashed into him, to then freeze rigid as he started to absorb the mystical energies. The little surge of power he'd experienced over drawing back into himself the first Orb of Confinement he'd cast against that demon after waking up in his new body sure as hell didn't feel anything like Xander was now experiencing. That had been akin to being shot by a dinky water pistol; this right here and now was being sprayed at full force by a honkin' big fire hose backed up by all the water trapped behind Hoover Dam. His whole body was comfortably on fire, from his skin to his deepest core, in a painless surge of warm heat that didn't burn, but instead thawed every molecule of his being.

He'd grown up as the child of two drunks, which meant Xander had determinedly vowed to never let a single drop of alcohol ever pass his lips. Seeing addictive behavior up close (with the accompaniment of the usual punch or slap) had also caused that teenager to avoid drugs. Which in due course resulted in the high school student currently hovering in the air, while greedily soaking up every bit of magic still being summoned, never in his life becoming intoxicated or high. Beginning to writhe in pure rapture from the wonderful sensations of pure power pouring into him, Xander could only manage a mental gasp of euphoria: *Good…as…Twinkies!*

Surprisingly enough, that odd phrase managed to settle Xander down a bit, along with the sudden sheepish memory of the time when, as a second grader, he'd found a lost twenty-dollar bill on a sidewalk, promptly went to the nearest grocery store to spend it all on boxes of Twinkies, and after consuming every single one of those snack cakes as fast as he could, that child then miserably learned it was indeed possible to overdose on his favorite dessert, and that those sweets had been a lot less delicious coming back up his throat than they'd been going down to his stomach.

Being mindful of this reminder of how easy it was to go too far, Xander managed to tone down enough of his current magically-caused exhilaration to quickly scan Wilkins' memories concerning the possible dangers of absorbing the vast amount of Hellmouth energies he'd already incorporated into himself. At once, now that it was finally being asked, the remaining fraction of the Mayor's personality urgently instructed Xander, in the most definite manner possible, to STOP RIGHT NOW!

Mouth dropping open in shock, Xander instantly sent a mental command downwards that shut off without any delay the wave of magic coming from the dimensional nexus and the rest of Sunnydale. As the Hellmouth then closed itself off while he continued floating in the air, a worried teenager subsequently followed Wilkins' next order in using the enchantment now displayed in the older man's memories. Effortlessly, Xander proceeded to cast upon his entire body personal wards that were mystical shields, capable of protecting him from others' magic and spells, while also concealing him from these possible enemies' attention.

Xander doubtfully asked a fading personality if it was really necessary to hide himself like that, only to be firmly assured by his mental guest that the young man had just gaudily displayed to the whole world that here was an inexperienced mage having vast powers that could be handily seized by any more-skilled opponent. The caustic phrase of "lighting a bonfire in cannibal country" was then brought up in Xander's head, making him hastily follow Wilkins' further directions in casting additional wards upon himself, with these specifically designed to protect him against non-magical, material weapons, from a thrown rock to an elephant gun. Defenses against much more powerful weapons could definitely be created, if Xander felt it was necessary to expend the Hellmouth's energies upon those spells.

The vague manner in which the last comment from Wilkins' memories was delivered made Xander a little thoughtful. He then probed into these recollections, trying to find out what had seemed a little off to him, only to have his eyebrows rise while coming across the Mayor's lifetime determination to be as thrifty as possible with the forces of the dimensional nexus he controlled, in order to accomplish his planned undertaking. Xander snorted to himself at that, muttering, "Yeah, the whole giant snake idea. Like that's gonna happen."

Shaking his head in firm rejection over that absurd plan, the teenager investigated further the stock of retained knowledge he'd gotten from the older mage, to then feel somewhat astonished at the new detail he'd just learned. Right now, Xander was imbued with as much personal power from the Hellmouth that the Mayor might have used in perhaps an entire decade, and that had been in both controlling the whole city of Sunnydale while also fending off potential usurpers. *Well, good, 'cause-*

_THUMP!_

Abruptly jerked from his thoughts, Xander gaped downwards at Sunnydale, seeing a small mushroom cloud rising at the spot near the center of the city, where a tremendous explosion had just taken place. "_Shit!_" he snarled, his anger again surfacing at this reminder of the disaster that was taking place in his hometown during this night of chaos. There just wasn't _time _to go slowly and cautiously with what he was learning about the Hellmouth mojo. People were getting hurt down there!

Well, at least he'd already managed to think up and do something about those people changed by their costumes in his previous encounters with these unlucky individuals. All he'd needed was more power, and after getting that from the Hellmouth, he could really get to work now. Leaning forward while still standing in mid-air, Xander thrust out his hands at waist level, every finger outstretched, as he concentrated.

*First things first-* Yes, from up here, he could scan the entire town, use his mojo to identify all those people wearing that asshole's costumes. *Aw, geez, there's so many of them! What'd he do, offer a two-for-one sale with his outfits to everybody? Never mind, you can punch his lights out later, but get back to business!* Gritting his teeth, Xander drew upon his newly-acquired Hellmouth energies inside himself, shaping these forces into the most powerful spell he'd cast so far.

From all of his fingertips, marble-sized Orbs of Confinement burst forth, one after the other in a continuous stream of steadily-expanding white globes that curved and swooped and dove down towards the city of Sunnydale, each and every one of these enchantments spreading out to head directly towards a single Chaos-affected Halloween celebrant.


	13. Chapter 13

High up in the sky over Sunnydale, Xander concentrated on maintaining the spell he was casting. He'd just sent off the last Orb of Confinement downwards, and the teenager in another's body absently watched it zoom away, to find and capture the final wearer of the Chaos-charged outfits. As Xander continued to pour the Hellmouth energies he'd recently absorbed into the multitude of imprisoning charms that were hopefully subduing and safeguarding those people who'd had the bad luck to wander into a certain Englishman's Halloween costume shop and purchased something there to wear tonight, the Scooby Gang member noted with a fraction of his attention that his recent scrying spell had only revealed the specific number of those unfortunate individuals, but not what they were wearing, or even who these Sunnydale citizens were, either in their new forms or in their original identities.

Shrugging to himself in mid-air, Xander doubted that he really needed to know the answers to those latter issues, as he kept on casting the spell. Even though it might be a good idea to check anyway, the high school student simply didn't have time to be picky about it, just like before, when he'd first done his large-scale casting of the Orbs. It could be settled later, _if_ there was indeed a later. In any case, things looked to be quieting down below on the streets of Sunnydale.

Xander cocked his head, listening while going through the last parts of the spell. Yeah, the noises of destruction had finally stopped - all the explosions, gunshots, screams, shattering glass, and everything else that showed people in their new costumes of Chaos weren't playing nice tonight. Unfortunately, this sudden silence was quickly broken by the numerous sirens of emergency vehicles, as the police, firefighters, and ambulance drivers started rushing to where they were needed.

Groaning in exasperation as he finally completed his casting, using the surge of emotion from his newfound irritation to nail down the spell that would surely keep his prisoners out cold and safe from harm in their confinement globes, Xander growled to himself, "Oh, _now_ those guys are willing to stick their noses outside their safe holes?"

The teenager's mood wasn't improved by the remnant of Richard Wilkins' personality indistinctly pointing out that it was by his direct orders that city employees stayed inside during the nights in Sunnydale, making sure the secrets of what happened in the town's darkness remained restricted to as few people as possible. Basically, while Wilkins normally used his sorcerous powers charged by the Hellmouth to keep things in the city from getting too bad and possibly attracting outsiders' attention, the citizens of Sunnydale were essentially on their own every night, and they quickly learned to stay home and to stay quiet then. This included the town's public officials. Any cop, firefighter, or EMT who disobeyed the Mayor's instructions and went outside after sunset to investigate strange noises, odd events, and bizarre-looking people had a tendency to disappear. Which made the survivors even more determined to ignore virtually everything that happened past the walls of their stations, hospitals, and vehicles.

Xander grimaced, as he realized that if this rule known by heart by every guy having their paycheck signed by City Hall had for once been totally disregarded, things must be really desperate out on the town's streets tonight. Even for Sunnydale Syndrome, there were limits to what this memory-altering spell could do on its own, and something on the order of Barney the Dinosaur and one of the velociraptors from the movie 'Jurassic Park' holding a cage match in the middle of someone's front lawn would damn well make the householder call the cops, or Steve Irwin, or _someone_ for help. Failing that, bring over a few dozen sets of earplugs before that incessant singing of "I love you, you love me" drove the entire neighborhood insane.

Glumly acknowledging to himself that he had to postpone his confrontation with that jerk Ethan while helping out with the consequences of that man's Chaos meddling, Xander began to quickly descend from his position in mid-air, his body heading towards the ground while checking again in his mind the spells that Wilkins knew concerning healing people, repairing destroyed homes and other buildings, and putting out fires. He'd undoubtedly also have to wipe away even more memories using the Sunnydale Syndrome spell at full power, which wasn't going to be fun at all, both for him and for those innocent people whose only crime tonight was to share the same town with a Grade-A bastard.

"Okay, that's it," muttered Xander to himself as he stopped about a hundred feet high above a major street, to then start smoothly gliding through the air towards the large cluster of blinking emergency lights ahead surrounding an office building currently on fire. "I was just gonna kill the guy, but now I think I'll torture him for a while before I do that."

His mature face grim, Xander Harris went off to help, forgetting his previous plans to possibly check upon those costumed people he'd just restrained in his Orbs of Confinement. Though, it really was a pity that he'd been distracted by other events at the moment in overlooking this, considering that various unexpected situations had just occurred at diverse locations where these energy globes had presently captured their prisoners. These circumstances included the following, in which had Xander known about them, he would have really, _really_ wanted to be present there, if only to have his heart burst in joy, or just to take lots and lots and lots of pictures.

* * *

As the descending globes of glowing energy headed directly for them, Madelaine Giroux once again screamed as she took to her heels along the Sunnydale street. Running as fast as she could by the side of the fleeing French noblewoman, Willow had to admit in the middle of her own panic that this time the annoying girl that had taken over Buffy's body had beyond any doubt good cause for her current terror. The smartest student at Sunnydale High didn't know why they were suddenly being pursued by big balls of white radiance, but it couldn't be good.

That was the redhead's last coherent thought, as the onrushing magical spheres overtook the two girls in their futile attempts at escape. The Orbs of Confinement, having been drawn by their Halloween costumes imbued with Chaos magic, now simultaneously engulfed the pair, lifting them off their feet to dangle inside the globes as both females were then rendered unconscious by the spell cast by a very busy Xander Harris several moments ago, who had no idea that his bestest bud had somehow managed to become a real ghost. Not that this state of non-corporeal existence kept Willow Rosenberg from being unaffected by the Hellmouth energies of Mayor Wilkins, as she now floated limply inside her own magical orb.

* * *

Taking a few steps back, to then scrape the toe of her right shoe across the ground in order to dislodge the upper left incisor stuck onto the material there, Cordelia Chase paid no attention to her actions, as instead she regarded with a very cold eye the whimpering creature lying before her, one hand clutching its groin and the other arm wrapped protectively around its head. That meant she'd be unable to kick out any more of Jo-Jo's teeth. However, it also meant that its ribs were now unprotected, so with the light of battle gleaming on her flawless features, the young woman in the tattered cat costume that was barely holding together during all her strenuous activities now stepped forward and swung back her right foot, about to find out how many fractures she could inflict on that hairy idiot's sternum.

In the next moment, while her foot was in mid-air, a blurring streak of whiteness fell from the sky, instantly covering all of Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, who jerked once and then gratefully became unconscious. Flinching backwards, Cordelia gaped at this creature now inside a glowing globe just a few feet away. She then started blinking and squinting at the sphere, as her immunity to Sunnydale Syndrome fought against the upgrade that Xander had just imparted to all of his Orbs of Confinement, which also resulted in giving Cordelia an overwhelming urge to avoid her present location. Stepping back further, Queen C then glared for a few seconds at her pursuer, who'd somehow found a way to avoid its deserved punishment, to then transfer her enraged gaze upwards at the sky from where the globe had descended.

As anybody who knew her would have resignedly admitted, the young woman's next actions were perfectly fitting for Cordelia Chase. In a blur of motion, her right arm shot up, fist clenched, as she furiously shook that part of her body towards the heavens, where an unknown someone had just spoiled her fun, all while shrieking at the top of her superb lungs, "YOU BIG JERK, I WASN'T FINISHED YET!"

That infuriated action also caused the last few remaining strands at the upper part of an overstressed, clawed, fabric costume to finally snap.

Instantly becoming stock-still in her displeased demeanor, her right arm still raised up high, Cordelia's eyes widened with horror, as she now felt a cold breeze where there most certainly should have been none, in a certain area of her upper torso that, other than her mother and her doctor, only someone possessing a financial portfolio with a minimum of nine digits (ten would have been better, but she was willing to negotiate) would ever be fortunate enough to see on their wedding night together.

Cordelia hastily clapped her crossed arms across her bare chest, looked around wildly for any possible witnesses, and when she thankfully saw none, this young woman then scuttled off homewards, having had more than sufficient Halloween entertainment for tonight.

* * *

His head tilted back, Angel wonderingly watched the white globes in the sky descend all around him into other parts of Sunnydale from where he was standing in the quiet residential street, having halted there during his trek to Buffy's house. The vampire with a soul now heard the sounds of anarchy in the city abruptly end, and shaking his head at another of tonight's mysterious events, Angel resumed his quick jog down the sidewalk. After a few more steps, something flickered at the top of his vision, and quickly looking up, the former member of the Scourge of Europe saw something that caused him to become alarmed.

A last white globe had descended to head level further down the block over the sidewalk, coming to a standstill in mid-air until it then started bobbling there in a somewhat disquieting motion. Executing a wary stop, Angel stared at this mysterious object, an uneasy feeling beginning to build inside him. Strange as it might seem, it felt as if that sphere was searching for something. Or someone.

As if that reaction itself had started things off, the radiant globe now blurred with pure velocity as it rushed right towards Angel, who used every bit of his own demonic speed as he promptly dove to the side, above the front yard of the house on his left, in a desperate attempt to evade the oncoming object. Faster than even a vampire could react, the sphere then swerved in its flight, to instantly engulf the Irishman in mid-air and render him unconscious, even as Angel's form continued in its comatose arc, twisting slightly so that when he crashed onto the yard, his body landed upon his front and slid along the grass, all while still covered by the Hellmouth energies. Finally coming to a halt, the prone vampire remained motionless, with the Orb of Confinement easily maintaining its function of keeping its prisoner safe and quiet.

Which was very odd indeed, since Angel certainly didn't have on him what these imprisoning globes were supposed to search for: the Chaos-imbued costumes of tonight's Halloween revelers.

However…

Just a couple of minutes ago, that vampire had a truly ridiculous encounter with someone who had decided to spend Halloween dressed up in his costume as his most favorite comic-book character, an amazing swordsman from ancient times, which had ended with Angel running for his unlife after barely escaping being decapitated by that barbarian hero. The creature of the night with the immense forehead hadn't managed to find out then exactly who he'd met, which was really a pity, since if Angel had known anything at all about Groo the Wanderer, that animal-blood-drinking demon would have fled right back to his Crawford Street mansion, hidden in the deepest, darkest corner of that building's basement, and started fervently praying, even if his lips blistered over the words.

Groo. A legend in his age, absolutely superlative with his pair of katanas, he'd been known to slay entire armies using only those swords. Unfortunately, in most cases, it was his _own _army that warrior massacred, either by being tricked into it by someone or just forgetting which side he was on. Not only was that man the most stupid person on earth, he carried inside himself the potential for ultimate disaster for anyone even encountering him. Or simply sharing the same continent with that walking catastrophe. He'd brought down entire businesses, towns, civilizations, and cultures, all without meaning to, or even noticing.

In his comic book, Groo was a living, breathing avatar of pure chaos, and Angel had spent several minutes in his company. Which might explain just why an Orb of Confinement had just collected that vampire.

Or why, when Angel slid along the lawn after passing out inside that mystical globe, he'd finished his short trip across the yard to wind up insensibly face-down at the exact spot where earlier today the neighborhood Great Dane had happily ended his week-long constipation.

Or why the lawn sprinklers turned on two seconds later, drenching the entire area with their icy spray for the next couple of hours.


	14. Chapter 14

Despite its name, its clientele, and the fact that it was located in its own pocket dimension, the Henchman's Bar was just like any other watering hole throughout the Multiverse. It was the cherished hangout for an assortment of minions, goons, underlings, and the like from all known times, existences, and realities that gathered together after a hard day at work, gratefully downed their brewskies, and then enjoyed a chance to safely grouse among themselves about their boss's latest stupid scheme. Much later on in the evening, if they were lucky, the newbies on their first visit to the bar would be the recipients of various, mostly-drunken, handy tips on how to survive working for people whose idea of employee relations was to expect absolute obedience for such orders as, "You there, what's-your-name, get ready to single-handedly fight off the Justice League while I escape through the secret tunnel!"

Over the years, a spot at the back of the bar, by the bulletin board with its bowling league sign-up sheet, had become covered with graffiti that presented some of the more sensible advice dispensed by uncredited, third-rank, subordinates before they'd passed out at their tables. On the wall by the phone nook, diverse beings had scraped with flint knives, hacked with battleaxes, and burned into the plaster using their laser pistols such hard-won pearls of wisdom as:

THE JOKER HAS NO SENSE OF HUMOR REGARDING THE JOY-BUZZER GAG BEING USED ON HIM.

IF YOUR DARK LORD INSISTS ON WEARING A CAPE, ALWAYS HANG BACK A FEW PACES WHILE MARCHING AFTER HIM; THEY GET REALLY CRANKY WHEN YOU STEP ON THIS.

IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO ATTRACT LEX LUTHOR'S ATTENTION BY YELLING, "HEY, BALDY!"

NEVER GOOSE SAURON.

From where he was hesitating by the restroom door, taking enough deep breaths to sustain him throughout his speedy micturation inside there without inhaling (a bunch of guys capable of firing their machine guns at full auto towards a hero standing six feet away and missing every single time isn't going to have all that good aim at anything else), a new addition to the graffiti caught the minion's eye:

TO ALL VAMPS: IT'LL HURT A LOT LESS IF YOU DELIVER AN ORIGINAL THREAT RIGHT BEFORE YOU ATTACK THE WORST GUY POSSIBLE.

*Wonder what's the story behind that? Ask around when it's your turn to buy a round,* mused the minion to himself, just before he yanked open the men's room door and dashed inside towards the nearest urinal at his full speed, hastily working at the fly zipper of his jumpsuit, all while holding his breath and feeling his eyes starting to burn.

* * *

Several months earlier, in his body of Mayor Wilkins, Xander balefully watched the ashes of the destroyed vampire drifting away from him further down the alley, carried along by the mild breeze of the Halloween night. The teenager who'd been changed into someone thirty years older snarled out loud, "Way to go, dude! Like it wasn't totally the wrong thing to say, 'Good thing for me that I like my dinner well done!' You deserved everything you got, even though I didn't know it was even possible!"

Mirthlessly smirking to himself, Xander sardonically replayed in his mind's eye how that vampire had looked in his final seconds of absolute agony, when the furious boy had magically teleported a minuscule drop of holy water right into every single one of that demon's nerve clusters throughout his entire body. That must have created for the vampire an ultimate state of pure pain just before he'd dusted, sadistically reflected Xander, who went on to thoughtfully wonder if he could do the same thing to Ethan, only with acid then instead of water. *Worth a shot, if I can't get my hands on an Australian jellyfish, those really nasty ones that can kill with their poisonous stingers, a funnel, and a tube of K-Y jelly.*

Xander Harris was not in a good mood.

He hadn't thought it was possible, but after spending valuable time and magical energy fixing what had been destroyed by the rampages of those changed by their Chaos-imbued costumes, Xander's ire had only increased. When he'd stepped out of anyone's sight into a nearby alley to start mystically scanning Ethan's location for whatever wards, defenses, or protections that mage had surely created, being accosted inside the passageway by a stinking vampire had been virtually the last straw.

*PROTECT PACK! PROTECT PACK!*

"Oh, _now_ what?" muttered Xander under his breath at this sudden mental eruption by Hyena. He'd thought the Primal animal spirit had finally been incorporated completely into his mind, with no further trace of her personality remaining. Though, it had been more like he and no one else had suddenly become conscious of something, as if remembering a vital task to be urgently accomplished. Frowning, Xander checked his thoughts, to then abruptly realize what Hyena had been warning him about.

Just because he'd recently subdued and confined those people changed by Chaos magic, it still didn't mean that it was absolutely safe to be around and about Sunnydale tonight. When Xander bemusedly checked Wilkins' memories, the Mayor quickly confirmed Rupert Giles' assumption explained earlier to the Scooby Gang that the town's vampire and demons regarded the concept of Halloween with utter disdain, and in the main, those creatures stayed inside their lairs during that holiday, allowing humans a rare night to walk without fear on the city streets. Normally, that is. Tonight had been anything but normal.

With worry beginning to appear on Xander's mature face, he realized that the vampire he'd encountered a few minutes ago might have been lured from his hiding place by the uproar of all the anarchy occurring tonight. And if that demon had come out…so could others, to find themselves sharing the night with Halloween trick-or-treaters.

Now his blood _really _turned cold. Xander cringed inwardly at the idea of vampires running amok among the children of Sunnydale, and he desperately asked Richard Wilkins inside his mind for advice, without even noticing that rather than contacting another personality, it was more like searching his recollections of other events like this and what actions had been taken, to either be repeated again, or to try something new. This meant that Xander soon made a decision that a firm hand was needed, and at once, without ever thinking if it was him or anyone else who'd quickly come to that conclusion.

Stepping out of the alley, his face set, Xander stood on the street sidewalk, effortlessly calling up Sunnydale Syndrome around himself to shield his next actions from anybody's prying eyes. In the next instant, the man in his formal suit (and still barefoot - he'd never bothered to change that during the last few hours) raised his right hand to chest level, index finger pointing away in front of himself, while he ran through his mind the spell he was about to cast with Hellmouth energy. An abrupt, last-minute thought called for his attention, and Xander grimaced to himself, grumbling, "Buffy's gonna owe me for this."

Altering his casting to allow for a single exception, Xander went back to work, until he could feel the spell within his body straining to break free. At the perfect moment, Xander then shot out his right arm, to point at nothing in particular down the street, as this act was symbolic only, when the teenager now cast his spell, pouring into this exactly the proper amount of Hellmouth energy to accomplish the specific hex he'd just performed.

In his mystical vision, Xander watched with grim pride as what looked like an intangible bolt of lightning burst from the tip of his pointing finger, a streak of supernatural force about ten feet long, that hurtled down the street to instantly vanish from sight. Staring after this while lowering his arm, Xander blinked away sudden tears, as he whispered into the night, "This one's for you, Jesse." He'd done what no one had ever thought possible, using the power of the Hellmouth itself that the Mayor would have never allowed anybody else to control.

The spell that Xander Harris had just cast would now hunt down and destroy every single vampire in Sunnydale. Besides Angel, of course.

In a totally unconscious display of youthful petulance over having to make that particular omission in his spell, Xander sullenly kicked the concrete sidewalk as hard as he could, only to then immediately realize, as pain shot upwards from his seriously-stubbed toes, that while Hyena's mystical toughness had kept his bare feet from being injured all through the night, there were limits to this protection. Hopping around along the now-cracked sidewalk on one foot, as he gingerly cradled his other throbbing foot in his hands, Xander gritted, "I don't care how many goo-goo eyes Buffy sends in his direction, Captain Hairgel's gonna pay for that!"


	15. Chapter 15

"What'd he do, take the long way around the whole bloody continent?" snarled Spike to nobody in particular, as he impatiently stood in the open doorway of his crypt. The blond demon glared at the moonlit graveyard outside, his bad temper only increasing by still seeing no sign of the minion he'd sent out an hour ago, to find exactly what all the fuss was about in Sunnydale tonight.

*Halloween. Just the soddin' name makes me want to puke and then shove the biggest lit pumpkin I can find up the arsehole of some nancy-boy dressed up in one of those stupid costumes.* Spike then delivered one of his choicest sneers ever into the darkness beyond. The vampire absolutely loathed tonight's holiday, and his mood wasn't improved the slightest by having to wait for the only fledgling on hand to come back and tell him what the hell was going on in the town-

"William."

Totally unprepared for that, Spike whirled around in the crypt doorway, and he then stood there gaping at who'd just called him by his real first name. In her usual tattered Victorian dress, Drusilla also stood in the middle of the gloomy crypt, her placid face the same pale tint as her ragged clothing. She kept her calm stare upon the demon she'd sired over a century ago, who was himself starting to feel a bit worried.

For the last few days, the insane vampiress had ignored everything that was occurring in her vicinity, including Spike's latest plan to kill the Slayer, remaining huddled in one corner of the crypt while holding some sort of silent communion with Miss Edith in her lap. Recollecting that, the Englishman blinked and then he lowered his gaze to the woman's arms held limply at her sides, and Spike also saw that her hands were also empty. Frowning, the vampire looked past an unmoving Drusilla, to see something that actually made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Tenderly placed in the corner where his lover had just been curled up, the doll treasured by the vampiress now rested on its rear, the limbs of this toy arranged to present Miss Edith in a sitting posture, her back to the crypt wall and her head positioned to stare straight ahead, right into Spike's bewildered face. In the next moment, just as the youngest member of the Scourge of Europe was beginning to become really uneasy, his view of this bizarre scene was blocked by Drusilla drifting nearer, her bare feet moving soundlessly over the stone floor.

"He won't be coming back, not after meeting the three-in-one and another soon after."

"Eh?" Nonplussed, Spike looked down into Drusilla's serene face observing him from her position where she'd halted within arm's length of him to then deliver that enigmatic statement. Cautiously, the former Londoner tried, "You mean, what's-his-name I sent out a while back? The bugger's gone to dust and all that? Well, no big loss, and that's what minions are for anyway. Look, love, could you be a tad more specific about the rest? Is there a new player in town, or-"

"William."

Abruptly shutting his mouth at hearing his name yet again, Spike now regarded with actual alarm the composed woman standing in front of him. Drusilla was…was…somehow, what he'd _never_ seen of her during his lengthy unlife in the company of this tormented seeress that had been broken and turned by Angelus. Here and now, she looked…lucid. Rational. _Sane._

Spike's current sense of utter stupefaction now kept him totally stock-still on his feet, even when the vampiress stepped forward and tightly embraced him. Still holding her arms around the motionless vampire, Drusilla, the trace of tears in her eyes alluding to her own name, now lifted her face, and whispered directly into Spike's dumbfounded features, "William, I forgive you for everything, all that you did, and all that you failed to do. Will you do the same for me, to find it in yourself, to forgive me, for everything?"

"I- I-" stuttered Spike, who then abruptly became silent in order to fully examine the woman holding onto him. The woman in his arms, as the vampire now performed his personal firm embrace of her. That simple action crystallized in Spike's mind the only decision he could possibly make, as he whispered down to his love, "I do forgive you, fully and completely. My Drusilla, my own." At those last words, William, who had been Spike, now lowered his head, to gently kiss the woman he worshipped.

He thought he'd never been this happy before, in either his life or his unlife, until to William's amazement, his joy actually increased at feeling his lover's lips pressed against his own turn upwards into a tender smile.

In that very moment, as previously foreseen by Drusilla, the intangible spell cast by Xander Harris in his new body as Mayor Richard Wilkins III several minutes ago then burst through the rear wall of the crypt, leaving no mark of its passage, until the enchantment went right through the unbeating hearts of the two vampires, far too quickly for even demonic creatures to notice or react, instantly ending their existences without the slightest pain.

The blank eyes of Miss Edith watched two clouds of dust hover for a moment in the crypt, until the mild breeze coming through the open doorway caused these particles to completely intermingle, and then drift slowly downwards to the stone floor.


	16. Chapter 16

Ignorant of the latest results of his vampire-destroying spell, Xander Harris was instead magically examining the costume shop across the street. With Sunnydale Syndrome tightly wrapped around himself to keep anybody from noticing there was a barefooted man, in his mid-forties wearing a formal suit that was itself at least that old, standing on the opposite sidewalk, Xander sent a truly baleful look towards the retail building containing the person responsible for all the anarchy that had taken place tonight.

Fighting down the strong urge to just blast the entire block into powder, Ethan Rayne included, Xander inspected his adversary's protections, using Wilkins' memories that had almost subsumed into his own mind. The teenager in the older man's body soon conceded that the English bastard had done some pretty impressive work in raising strong magical wards to keep any potential intruders away. Of course, there were two things about these guardian spells that were currently making Xander experience a warm and fuzzy feeling.

The first thing was that these wards were powered by the personal mystical energies of the mage inside the costume shop, rather than any Chaos magic. Ethan had a substantial level of mojo, Xander admitted to himself, but it didn't match in any way a guy chock-full of Hellmouth energies. Further, as his lips peeled back into a very nasty Hyena grin, the high school student enjoyed a mental image of the Mayor explaining that during his century-long rule of Sunnydale, he'd gone to every building that had been erected in the town, and that sorcerer had then added a single drop of his blood to every construction site. Which meant that under the rules of magic, Wilkins _possessed_ the structure.

The magical wards that Ethan Rayne had set up inside the costume shop would work against anybody _but_ the man now beginning his casual stroll across the street, and as he stepped onto the sidewalk before the building, a Hellmouth spell was selected and cast by him. Xander didn't bother with opening the door to the shop. Instead, the entire storefront disappeared. Not in a thunderous explosion of flying debris as the whole side of the building facing the street was destroyed, but in a much more scary display of absolute power as he subtly used his magic to make tons of brick and steel and plaster evaporate in an instant. The protective wards shielding the interior of the store, cast by a certain Englishman to prevent anyone from disturbing him during the ceremony that had summoned Janus tonight and also after when Chaos ruled in Sunnydale, also popped out of existence like a soap bubble.

Ethan, who'd been standing in front of the shop counter, admiring the bust of his god placed on this flat surface, had good reflexes for a man of his age, almost managing to fully turn around during his hasty spin to see what had occurred behind him a second ago. However, Xander wasn't in the mood for a confrontation with that other mage right now. That would indeed come later between the pair, and Ethan would be extremely unlikely to enjoy the merest moment of that experience.

Instead, Xander hit Ethan with a sleep spell already at hand, immediately rendering that man unconscious, with the inertia of the Briton's turning of his body causing him to twist around while promptly dropping to the shop floor, landing on his right side with a heavy thud. An insensible Ethan then rolled onto his front, a muffled snore coming from the face pressed against the linoleum.

With burning eyes, Xander shot a quick glance at the sleeping man, magically checking on his health, for the teenager newly changed into the Mayor of Sunnydale to then coldly note that Ethan seemed to be uninjured except for some bruising where he'd landed hard on the floor. Like Xander cared the slightest, as he now came to a halt in the middle of the shop, grinding his teeth in absolute rage as that young man contemplated exactly what had happened tonight due to a sick bastard's actions.

That…that _thing_ there had readily sold Halloween costumes to children and other innocent people that would cause them to change into their characters, with Ethan indifferent to what kind of person this new being would be like - good, bad, or other - in contrast to the former host now helplessly controlled by their possessors. Not only had Ethan been supremely unconcerned about what the newly-changed individuals might do to anyone within range, that man had calmly shown the utter lack of any possible scruples over whatever his customers might later feel about how they'd behaved while under the influence of their costumes.

He'd allowed people to purchase costumes of fictional _serial killers_. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers - and those had merely been the _human_ monsters, with far worse costumes smilingly sold by Ethan, to then benignly watch those outfits being carried out of his shop in the hands of his customers of all ages.

The only thing that Xander could compare it to, in all its horror, was a lunatic deciding to spike Halloween candy with some hallucinogenic drug such as LSD for his own insane purposes. That nutjob might not actually intend to kill or injure anyone, but what difference would that make to those innocents and their families who suffered from that man's irresponsible actions? However, Ethan Rayne wasn't mentally ill. He'd known exactly what he was doing all along and he'd enjoyed it, which made it even worse, if that was possible.

Angrily shrugging his shoulders, Xander sent one last glare at the slumbering man on the shop floor. The only….the truly solitary reason why Ethan was still asleep, instead of being awaken and magically ordered to claw with his fingernails into his stomach to then pull out and devour his intestines, was that Xander might need him alive (for now) to find out how to get things back to normal in Sunnydale tonight.

Lifting his gaze from Ethan to look around the room, the first thing to catch the teenager's eye was that odd little two-headed statue resting on the shop counter. Warily observing that object that seemed to have no good reason for being there, Xander opened his personal shields a fraction while sending through these a magical probe to check on the piece of sculpture. An instant later, Xander screamed, "YAAAHH!" as his head felt like it had just exploded.

Stumbling back in pain as he reflexively slammed shut his shields, Xander blinked away tears, to then wipe the back of his right hand across his face. As he brought down his hand, Xander stared in astonishment at one of the most powerful mystical items that the Mayor had ever encountered. An actual, Janus-charged bust of that very god of beginnings and endings, of the past and the future, of gates, doorways, and bridges. It absolutely _had_ to be what had caused all the trouble tonight.

Wincing as he remembered the agony of even an instant's unprotected exposure to that object of power, Xander felt immense frustration beginning to build up in him. How the hell was he going to be able to do anything? That hunk of rock was so charged up with mojo to the max that Xander didn't think any spell he knew from the Mayor would have the slightest effect on it. Plus, if he made the smallest mistake that weakened his shields, he was going to be a crispy-fried Xander-

*Break the statue.*

"What?" incredulously yelped Xander to the fading voice in his head, with the waning of the thoughts showing that the integration of the Mayor's memories with Xander's own was nearly complete. The young man then impatiently snapped, "You just pointed out that we - I - don't know anything that'll work on it!"

*No magic. Hit it with something or throw it to the floor, hard enough to shatter it.*

Stuttering "Ah…ah…," in utter disbelief, Xander trailed off, to begin again, "It can't be that easy!" Nonetheless, as he started to scan his memories, a thrill of optimism pierced his heart, with the teenager coming across the exact bit of knowledge the Mayor had formerly possessed concerning how to end the effects of Chaos magic. True, it was from past accounts of others' experiences with that type of spellcasting, since Wilkins himself had no personal history of dealing with it. Which among other things, was why the sorcerer had been successfully seized in the first place by the spell that had turned Xander into him.

As he went through the recollections of the Mayor's study of Chaos magic, Xander skipped ahead, as he'd fallen into the habit of doing so, by asking his next question out loud, "What happens when the statue is broken?"

*Everything returns to what it was before.*

A stunned Xander just stood there, as his entire soul seemed to ignite in hope. Quavering, he whispered, "W-W-Wils? Wils will be alive again? Please-"

*If her death was directly due to the Chaos magic that affected her costume. Any other cause of death, mystical or material, will be unchanged.*

Xander scanned that specific information with total absorption, unconsciously nodding as it made sense to him. If one of Ethan's former customers had brought a cowboy costume, complete with a faux pair of six-shooters and when the Chaos magic had swept through Sunnydale to change everyone, including a now-real Western cowhand with a working set of Navy Colt .45's that had been fired off, either at a streetlamp in fun to shatter the bulb, or during a more serious reason against someone else such as another costumed character or a normal Sunnydale human, there would be clear consequences for both events, even if the cowboy later changed back to their original personality. Such as an enduring bullet hole in something or someone.

In any case, it was evident that the statue had to be destroyed at once, if only because it might simply stop working right now out of sheer contrariness. Should that happen, it was quite possible the effects of the Chaos spell would be permanent for anyone already influenced by it. Shuddering at the very idea, Xander impulsively stepped forward to the counter, to then seize the little figurine in both hands, and he quickly lifted up what was in his grip, about to hurl it with all his might to the floor and smash the Janus statue into as many pieces as he could. However, the very instant his hands had brought their burden up to the Sunnydale native's head level, so that the mature man's eyes met the unblinking gaze of one of the double faces of the god of disorder, Xander Harris froze absolutely still, as a horrified realization abruptly burst inside his mind.

If he did it- If he broke the statue- He was going to _die._


	17. Chapter 17

Inside the costume shop, a faint breeze brushed against the remaining magic-imbued outfits that hadn't been sold, with this mild gust of wind coming through the massive opening in the front of the building that Xander had created to enter and confront Ethan Rayne. Fortunately, nobody was currently around this deserted area of Sunnydale to gape at the missing part of that structure, or to look inside to see the back of an immobile figure there holding something up in their hands. This breeze also gently stirred the tie of the formal suit that Xander was still wearing, an action totally ignored in the teenager's frantic thoughts as he despairingly worked out the consequences of his next actions, whatever they were.

Break the statue, and all those affected by the Chaos magic in their costumes would return to normal. Including Xander. He'd been changed into Richard Wilkins III, Mayor of Sunnydale, by the strip of cloth acquired from this very place and made into a sash proudly proclaiming the wearer was indeed a MAYOR, and also by owning a business card signed by that man himself, with this little scrap of paper somehow also being permeated by the spell cast by the Janus statue.

Break the statue, and Xander would at once change back to his usual ordinary, human self, with the same face and body he'd had all his life before this Halloween. True, that also meant something else: his mental interloper, the Primal animal spirit known as Hyena, would also return to existence inside his mind, still confined there and not happy about this whatsoever. Yet, given the exact kind of awful luck he'd been having all night, this wasn't the very worse thing that would happen to Xander.

Break the statue, and _Mayor Wilkins_ would also return to life in his office at City Hall.

Hopelessly going through his memories that were currently also the memories of the undying evil sorcerer that had ruthlessly controlled the Sunnydale Hellmouth for a century, Xander dully noted that there wasn't anything in there to indicate either way if Wilkins would even remember being absorbed by the teenager right after the Chaos spell had been cast, and what had then occurred. Or if Xander himself would remember anything after the statue was smashed. Like it mattered. The Mayor would certainly recollect how he'd been mystically affected by something earlier tonight, and that man would instantly use his magic to find out what.

Further guided by his memories, a nauseous Xander could mentally see it all now. Once he finally had time to study things, Wilkins would promptly identify the presence of Chaos magic in his city. Not only that, throughout the entire town of Sunnydale, there would be the signs of massive usage of Hellmouth energies, and the Mayor would damn well know he hadn't done this! Which led to the next step: _Who?_

Gulping, Xander paused in his thoughts to gently replace the Janus statue onto the register counter, to then take a step back and stand there, his shoulders slumping in utter dejection as he resignedly continued inside his head. A simple scrying spell by the Mayor - something that Xander himself hadn't had the least bit trouble with! - and the pair of troublemakers responsible for everything tonight would be immediately located, and a very furious sorcerer would teleport himself from his office right into the costume shop, eager to get on with the upcoming interrogations that would not end happily for Xander and Ethan. To be precise, both of them would be promptly executed afterwards.

To the fatalistic teenager beginning to sway upon his feet, the only thing unclear about his coming demise was merely how much it was going to hurt. Of course, Ethan's own death would be the result of that mage's actions, simply for daring to come into the Mayor's territory and then setting off his little Halloween joke. It wouldn't make the slightest difference to Wilkins that the Englishman hadn't intended at all for his spell to affect the master of Sunnydale. Nor would the fact that Xander Harris was a truly innocent victim either, or that this high school student was going to be the last casualty of tonight's events.

There was absolutely no possibility of any other outcome for Xander. Not when Wilkins would rip from the younger man's brain every single memory of what he'd done and learned tonight. Including the sorcerer's plans to soon become an Old One, a pure-breed demon that would devastate the world. Even if Xander had totally forgotten everything about becoming the Mayor when the Chaos magic was ended by the Janus statue's destruction, just the chance - much less the actuality that had happened tonight - of him indeed finding out this secret meant that Wilkins would kill Xander without a second's thought. That politician had done far worse in the past to a lot more people over the faintest prospect of his privacies becoming discovered, as an appalled Xander straightaway learned from his memories.

Gagging over this, Xander shuddered and crossed his arms over his chest as if for warmth, shifting on his feet to turn his gaze away from that little figurine on the counter that was his doom. A soft, snorting sound coming from the floor sent Xander's panicked gaze downwards, to see Ethan still lying there subsist back into his magical slumber. Glaring at the insensible guy whose fault it totally was regarding everything that had happened tonight, the features of the mature man standing there in his formal suit abruptly contorted in surprise, and then into cautious hope.

Here was somebody who _knew_ about Chaos magic. Maybe, just maybe, Ethan had something in his head that could fix things- Instantly pointing a finger at the man resting on the floor, a suddenly-optimistic Xander brought up from his mind the proper spell, and as he carefully lowered his magical shields the merest fraction, the teenager cast the enchantment, with a small, glowing ball of light then bursting from this fingertip to zoom right at Ethan's skull, landing there to painlessly sink through hair, skin, and bone out of sight. Waiting patiently, his finger still pointing, Xander watched for a few seconds, until he was rewarded by seeing the ball of light reappear from the same point on the seemingly-unaffected Englishman's head, lifting itself from there to again fly through the air unerringly at its target, the very same fingertip from where it had been cast.

Reabsorbing his spell now filled with Ethan's memories that mainly had to do with Chaos magic, Xander stood there frozen for a moment, until his eyes bulged, that young man staggered back a few steps, and then he abruptly bent over to clutch at his heaving stomach. His head still hanging downwards, Xander groaned to the floor, "Great googly moogly! Like I really _needed _to see G-man dressed up in women's underwear! Funny, I'd have expected him to be a Rocky Horror fan of Brad or the Criminologist, not anybody else."

Gingerly straightening up, Xander scrubbed hard at his face, as if trying to wipe away the few truly distressing memories that had randomly come along with the desired recollections. Concentrating on these, Xander's mood gradually became gloomier, as nothing seemed to help. *So, he was friends with Giles back in merry England, and he just showed up here?* "Shit! He didn't even know about the Mayor or anything else, just about the Hellmouth, and that his spell would work better here!" *Got a bunch of costumes, met Buffy, saw she was the Slayer and learned about Giles, had a good laugh about him being her Watcher and that she'd likely get killed in her noblewoman's costume-* "Asshole!" *Uh, yeah, breaking the statue will end the spell and change everyone back, me included, but nothing how to stop the Mayor, dammit!* "You stupid fucker, I hope he wakes you up and kills you first, so I can at least see that before it's my turn!"


	18. Chapter 18

Quivering in rage, his fists clenched at his sides, Xander once more glared at the mage on the floor still in his slumber. Hastily turning away before he totally lost his temper and kicked in Ethan's head, the teenager in the body of someone else who was certainly going to be furious about that again glumly stared at the Janus statue on the register counter. "I really, _really_ hate magic," muttered Xander, his right hand coming up to the back of his skull and scratching the cropped hair there in a vain attempt to think of something, anything-

Suddenly jerking his hand away, to then bring it around to hold this part of his body in front of his face, Xander stared at Richard Wilkins' outstretched fingers there, with his new features wearing a maniacally hopeful grin, as he exclaimed, "_I'm_ a sorcerer now, and I've got his memories! If I use his magic and remember what he can't defend against, maybe I can come up with something…"

Trailing off, Xander hurriedly started planning in his mind. *Lessee, there's no magic I can use on that rock, and after it's smashed, I'll be ordinary again, so it has to be before that. Um- Magic up a weapon that'll work on him, or put his secret of becoming a giant snake into someplace he can't get to and use it to blackmail him into leaving me alone, or set up a spell that'll hide me somewhere he can't find me when the statue is broken-*

His features paling, Xander stopped his reckless plans, as cold reality in the form of the Mayor's memories intruded itself into his mind. The bleak fact was that this sorcerer had a century of creating _his_ own plans to take care of anything his enemies might try, plus he was a lot smarter than one Xander Harris. Not to mention that Wilkins had just faintly informed that teenager possessing the older man's memories that even if Xander did come up with something that might actually work and that the Mayor hadn't foreseen, the most simple and effective strategy to counter the high school student's idea would be for the sorcerer to take hostages - up to the entire town of Sunnydale, if necessary - and kill several or most of them. _Then_ order Xander to surrender. Said hostages would certainly include the rest of the Scooby Gang and their families.

Yes, Wilkins knew all about the small group meeting in their high school library headquarters that supported Buffy Summers in her battles against the creatures of the night. That man had occasionally availed himself of their services by subtly aiming them at certain troublesome vampires and other demons who were making a nuisance of themselves in Sunnydale, and as long as they remained ignorant of who was truly pulling their strings, the Mayor had left the Slayer and her friends in peace. One takes good care of one's tools, after all.

This would certainly change once the Chaos spell was broken. His face now turning pasty white, Xander further understood from Wilkins' icy memories that since Buffy, Willow, Snyder, the trick-or-treaters, and a good portion of the town had seen him as the Mayor even before the big change for everyone, it only made sense for the sorcerer to possibly kill them all off too, if there was any chance at all that these people had learned about the politician's secrets. That likelihood also eliminated Xander's very last hope. Just for trying to contact him, much less in succeeding in that teenager's desperate appeal for his advice, an automatic death sentence would be given to Rupert Giles.

At that very moment, the son of Tony and Jessica Harris finally accepted his fate. However, even if he was going to die, he'd do his damnedest to make sure nobody else suffered. His mature face set, Xander once more opened his magical shields a fraction, to then jab a forefinger at thin air, which made several sheets of blank paper appear to hover at chest-level above the costume shop floor. Wearily closing his eyes, Xander concentrated as hard as he could, which meant he missed seeing how the sheets of paper promptly became covered in his own handwriting, completely filling the letter.

It was a full account of everything significant that had happened during the last few days, from Xander's first meeting with Ethan Rayne, including the entire events of Halloween, and ending with the teenager writing his suicide note. For that's exactly what it was.

Xander was making the only bargain he could, and the key to that was Wilkins' own memories, as stressed by the teenager in his letter. The young man reminded the sorcerer that both of them now knew what the older man's overriding purpose was and also the bloody actions over the last century that the politician had taken to accomplish this, coldly doing whatever was necessary. And…also refraining from performing what was unnecessary. The Mayor didn't kill out of sadism, greed, or cruelty; all the lives he'd taken had been done for a specific purpose, and if there had seemed to be no pressing reason during all that time to murder anyone, Wilkins hadn't bothered to do so.

In his letter, Xander proposed that tonight, only he and Ethan would die.

After finishing his note, he'd magically send it to the Mayor's desk for him to read (after all, the teenager knew _exactly_ how to get this message past that sorcerer's wards), and keep a copy of it on himself, on the outside chance that after the Janus statue was broken, neither of them would remember what had occurred to themselves tonight. Or maybe they would. Anyway, Xander agreed to submit himself to what would happen next.

The morning after Halloween, two bodies would be found inside a costume shop, one being the proprietor of that business, and the other a local Sunnydale teenager dressed in an outdated formal suit. Both of the pairs' deaths would be perfunctorily investigated by the Sunnydale Police Department, and those zealous(!) law enforcement officials would eventually report that it appeared the deceased had killed each other during a fight, with no known reason for their conflict.

Virtually all of the small California city's population under the influence of Sunnydale Syndrome wouldn't pay the slightest bit of attention to that minor piece of news appearing in their daily newspaper. If anyone even noticed or cared, including the majority of those who'd actually known the dead teenager, they'd probably just think, *Oh, him, the one with the drunk parents. Looks like he finally went bad. Wonder how the Dodgers did yesterday?*

Of course, several other people would know better, and they'd promptly carry out their own investigation, only to then sadly come to the proper conclusion about what must have happened in the costume shop. Since he hadn't gotten a Halloween outfit at that place (Xander stressed in his letter that Buffy and Willow had been told in the school library after he'd changed there that the formal suit he wore was from his grandfather's stuff), on that night, the teenager must have been unaffected, only to realize the costumes from an Englishman's place of business had changed their wearers. With no means of finding the affected Slayer and his red-haired friend, and having no time to contact Giles, Xander must have gone off alone to confront Ethan Rayne, and it had ended in a deadly altercation between the pair that at least had ended the Chaos magic. The only people in Sunnydale he truly cared about would know that Xander Harris had given his last full measure for them.


	19. Chapter 19

Xander finished off his letter to the Mayor by reminding this sorcerer the younger man fully understood that after his death, Wilkins was perfectly free to do whatever he wanted in also killing the Scooby Gang and anyone else that had the slightest chance of knowing the politician's secrets. Trying to stop this by using the sorcerer's own magic in sending pre-cast spells to directly attack Wilkins right after he came back to life in City Hall wouldn't work, since the protective wards around him there created by a century of sacrifices would handily shrug off Xander's hexes at their current level of power, and using more Hellmouth energies risked severe collateral damage that wouldn't just stop at the town's administrative center being destroyed. It was entirely possible that if Wilkins was attacked elsewhere besides City Hall, the entire town might be reduced to rubble. Nope, what Xander had done was to set up something that would keep good ol' Dick as busy as a bee.

A grimly-amused teenager then carefully wrote out the name of a certain spell that Wilkins had learned decades ago, but had also never used in all that time, for very good reasons. After all, the whole point of becoming an anonymous small-town government official in Sunnydale had been to _avoid_ the attention of other magic users.

The Fellowship of the Coven spell had been around for centuries, a minor enchantment that sent a sociable salutation by a witch, wizard, kenning woman, mage, or any other being possessing supernatural powers to their friends or acquaintances having those same abilities. Kind of like a computer e-card. Anyway, it had fallen out of favor long ago, since this spell had the minor drawback of being extremely easy to trace, and after sending that greeting, various magicians had been located and murdered by their enemies following this magical communication. Still, the cantrip remained very effective in reaching those it had been sent to, being incredibly difficult to be blocked or impeded by anyone, no matter their level of mystical power, which appealed mightily to a young man desperate to protect his friends.

Explaining further in his letter, Wilkins was flatly told by Xander that he'd used the last of his Hellmouth energies to set up some final spells that would start the instant the Janus statue was broken. One spell would continually check his friends' life signs, and if the Mayor tried anything, the Fellowship of the Coven spell would instantly go right out, causing every single magic user in the world to receive the following message: "Howdy do, everyone! Richard Wilkins I, II, III here, on the beautiful Boca del Infierno in sunny California! I was feeling a little bored being the Master of the Hellmouth, so y'all come down, and let's boogie! Betcha I can win all the limbo contests before I turn into an Old One and gobble up everybody on earth!"

Finally opening his eyes, Xander smirked at his completed letter, as he used his magic to make two copies of this, sending one away to a currently-unoccupied office in City Hall, and teleporting the other note into his suit pocket. Next, as promised, the teenager set up his precautionary spells. Carefully using his mystic vision to confirm these were properly done and ready to go off if necessary, Xander paused, as he wondered if he should have added a little more information to his letter. Shrugging, the high school student reminded himself that Wilkins was a very smart man, and that sorcerer didn't need to have everything spelled out to him. After an extended lifetime of learning patience, the Mayor would surely be able to control his temper long enough for him to work out how to destroy the Fellowship of the Coven spell without setting it off. In the meantime, he'd refrain from harming the Scooby Gang, with that politician only keeping a close eye upon the group, which in turn would eventually cause him to grudgingly realize that none of them knew anything about his secrets, and hopefully decide to leave them alone for the present.

In the costume shop, Xander huffed a deep sign of resignation. That was the most he could do for his friends; now they were on their own, to perhaps someday learn the truth about the Mayor in time to stop that sorcerer from becoming an Old One. Despite knowing how powerful Wilkins was, the teenager was still fairly confident the Scooby Gang would win in their coming battle with the politician, if only because of exactly what that master of Sunnydale was so ludicrously planning to do to himself. *I mean, a giant _snake_? Sheesh…*

Shaking his head in weary exasperation, Xander looked at the small statue before him resting unassumingly upon the register counter, and he became much more subdued as his hands again grasped the carved stone, fingers curling around the double faces of Janus. Lifting the bust to his head level, Xander closed his eyes in preparation for his final actions as Mayor Wilkins, tensed his muscles, and-

Yet again, a flash of insight suddenly appeared in Xander's mind, causing him to abruptly halt before he could hurl the statue to the floor, as this unexpected inspiration overwhelmed his brain.

It was…

Horrible. Terrible. Awful.

Still…it might work. And even if it didn't, how the hell could it make matters any worse?

Opening his eyes to stare straight ahead as he absently lowered the Janus statue to be held in his hands at waist level, the high school student queasily admitted to himself that there was no possible way he would've thought up that appalling idea all on his own, even just yesterday when he'd happily been ordinary Xander Harris. Now, however, he was Xander _and_ Hyena _and_ Wilkins _and_… Yeah, even Ethan Rayne, whose Chaos knowledge he'd just absorbed, along with everyone's else personalities and memories and urges for survival. They'd all come together to think up this last-second scheme, which he was…seriously considering.

No, Xander bleakly corrected himself, not considering. _Consenting_. It was either that or death, anyway, which helped the Sunnydale native to finally make his decision, which was not easy at all, but rather, inevitable.

As he turned around while still carrying the little statue, Xander grimly noted to himself that during the following decided course of action, he needed to rapidly say four specific words, all while carrying out four actions as quickly as possible. Which was undoubtedly the result of one last cosmic joke being gleefully played upon Mr. Xander Harris, butt-monkey extraordinaire, by the Hellmouth itself.

Reaching the proper spot in the costume shop, the mature man carefully knelt down on the floor, and while on his knees, Xander lifted the Janus figurine in his hands over his head, and he closed his eyes. A moment later, he guiltily opened them, while bitterly telling himself, *You chose this, so you watch it all, dammit!*

Taking a deep breath, Xander then roared out, from the very bottom of his lungs, four words that echoed throughout the costume shop, while simultaneously banishing every magical shield he'd previously had around himself to protect himself from the Chaos magic, crushing with greater-than-human force the double-faced carving in his hands, while bringing down as hard as he could the Janus statue already beginning to crumble directly upon the back of an insensible Ethan Rayne's head, shattering both stone and skull in one savage blow.


	20. Chapter 20

She'd never before seen her friend so mad.

A subdued Buffy Summers followed an angrily-striding Willow Rosenberg through the deserted halls of Sunnydale High, with that latter girl out in front of the pair heading towards the school library. Her heightened senses allowed the accompanying Slayer to hear the growling hisses under the redhead's breaths that never actually turned into fuming words, but conveyed well enough the incensed mood of the smartest girl in the school. Along with the irate boot heeltaps and the soft, rapid rubbing of the sexy leather outfit against the stomping body of someone who'd been coaxed by Buffy earlier tonight into reluctantly wearing that midriff-baring, clinging, thigh-high, low-cut-

As she trailed along after, Buffy mentally grumbled to herself, *Okay, if you want to be really picky about it, that one was my fault, but I don't even _remember_ anything else!*

One second, she'd been walking down a sidewalk while surrounded by the Halloween trick-or-treaters in her charge, and the next second, she'd woken up lying on her back in the middle of a Sunnydale street, dazedly listening to feminine screeches of pure fury and the sounds of something being trampled. Still remaining in her unexpected position, the Slayer warily turned her head to look across the street where Willow in Buffy's best leather skirt was jumping up and down as hard as she could, with both of her boots landing directly upon a formerly-white sheet.

Watching in sheer fascination for a few seconds, Buffy had then shoved back with the palms of her hands against the street asphalt, lifting her upper body in the formal gown she was still wearing. Sitting with her legs sprawled in the gown's lower skirt, the Los Angeles native pulled off the brown wig she'd been wearing and shook out her hair, all while Willow then viciously kicked her former costume into the street storm drain. The sheet fluttered as if waving goodbye as it disappeared through the opening in the curb, with Willow glaring after this, standing there in the street as her cleavage heaved in both respiration and triumph.

Idly noting that if Xander had been here, he'd have collapsed to the ground in a puddle of his own drool, Buffy bemusedly called out, "Uh, Willow, what's going- _Hey!_"

That last yelp was the result of Willow spinning around in the street at hearing her name, dashing forward to where Buffy was lying on the ground, and bending down to grab the Slayer's left arm and yanking that young woman right up to her feet in a single hard pull. An astonished Buffy swayed on her dancing slippers, not believing her friend's sudden strength, until Joyce Summers' daughter cringed away from what was being screamed into her face at extremely close range.

"WE HAVE TO FIND XANDER-! Wait, you called me Willow, are you back again, Buffy?"

"A little less volume please, Wils," groaned Buffy, rubbing her aching ears in reaction to the first part of that shrieked statement. Abruptly stopping in her aural massage, Buffy blinked at her friend, bewilderedly asking, "Back? Did I go somewhere?"

"Aaaaahhhh!" Throwing up her arms in exasperation, Willow's attention was suddenly caught by something further up the street, resulting in Buffy also following her gaze. There, both saw a small costumed figure standing on the sidewalk, looking around in confusion, until this little girl in a fairy princess outfit then burst into tears and let her plastic pumpkin fall to the ground, spilling out its load of Halloween candy.

Grabbing Buffy's arm again, Willow started dragging her along, as both headed towards the still-crying child. The redhead snapped to her friend, "I'll tell you while we collect the kids we had along! Just one thing…" As Willow paused, an amazed Buffy now heard teeth actually grind, just before the girl in the racy clothes snarled over her shoulder, "If you ever again demand I call you 'My lady', I don't _care_ if you're the Slayer, I'm gonna make you eat your stake!"

A frantic hour later, throughout the rounding up of the trick-or-treaters, escorting them back to the high school while also fruitlessly searching for Xander Harris, and handing the children over to their parents picking them up at Sunnydale High, Willow Rosenberg was about to erupt. She'd managed a few quick whispers with Buffy outlining some of tonight's bizarre events, and Willow had also tried to question several of Xander's charges about what had happened to him. Unfortunately, after seeing their blank faces that were mirrored by their parents, the redhead girl glumly knew that Sunnydale Syndrome had struck again.

Her mood hadn't been improved the slightest when Willow had made a beeline straight for the nearest public phone at the school once they'd returned there, callously leaving Buffy to deal with all the kids and the adults. An alarmed Rupert Giles taking the call admitted he'd been engrossed in a good book inside his quiet den at his apartment tonight, and he hadn't noticed anything odd at all happening outside in Sunnydale. Neither had Xander contacted him before Willow's message. The Englishman hastily agreed to meet the pair of girls at the school library; he'd take the back entrance so as not to be noticed by any remaining trick-or-treaters or those who were collecting them.

As the two girls approached the library door after seeing off the last of their charges, an unhappy Buffy noted that her Slayer hearing was listening in to only one heartbeat inside that book-filled room, and it was her Watchers', a sound as familiar to the young woman as her own heartbeat. Sitting at his desk, Rupert Giles' heart was beating fast, undoubtedly due to rushing over from his apartment after learning about tonight's strange events and Xander's disappearance. Buffy just hoped that Willow wouldn't start yelling right away; the Scooby Gang needed to first discuss what had happened this Halloween and then come up with some kind of plan to find their friend, instead of blaming people who didn't know what they'd done wrong in the first place!

Shoving the library door open, a glowering Willow stalked inside, followed right after by Buffy, as they headed to their usual seats at the main table in the center of the room. As expected Giles was at his desk, calmly watching them come in, as the stationary man in his chair waited for them to take their own seats. Occupied in their own thoughts during their short walk, neither of the feminine pair noticed that Giles' posture seemed a bit stiffer than usual, and the man's eyes looking ahead in his still face seemed to glint with a desperate light.

Dropping into her chair and then sullenly folding her arms over her much-too-exposed chest, Willow ignored Buffy drawing her own chair back, with the redhead then opening her mouth, about to start giving everyone within range a piece of her mind. Instead, Willow abruptly flinched away from the sudden flash of light next to her, twisting in utter panic to then see Buffy slump down in her seat, with the Slayer being covered by a glowing, transparent sheet of white illumination over her entire body.

"Yeeee!" shrieked Willow, scrambling up and back a few steps from her chair, to stand there trembling in absolute fright and disbelief, as the white light wrapped around Buffy flickered and then disappeared. However, the Slayer didn't move the slightest, only remaining staring straight ahead as she sat in her own chair, the blonde girl's hands and forearms resting limply on top of her gown's skirt.

Her mouth hanging open, Willow then shot a desperate gaze at where Giles was sitting, with her terror only increasing at seeing that man behind his desk also totally motionless and looking past her, with not even a single twitch of his eyes in her direction. Only slow, measured eyeblinks in time with his deep breaths disturbed the Briton's immobility.

Instead, the only movement at that exact moment came from right behind Rupert Giles, as the very air before a bookcase shimmered and then peeled back, to reveal standing there a tall man with a receding hairline, a few years older than the librarian he was looming over, with a deep frown on the features of the intruder in the outdated formal suit, as he briskly declared, "Okay, people, we need to talk-" Abruptly cutting himself off, the trespasser in the Scooby Gang's lair had his own mouth fall open, as he gawked at the shivering girl before him. Finally, this man managed to deliver in a very faint voice a truly disbelieving question:

"Wils, why are you dressed like _that_?"

* * *

Peace.

Darkness.

Her hands being rapidly patted.

Babble.

"-sorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry-"

Abruptly recovering from her short faint, Willow Rosenberg opened her eyes and looked into the frantic face of someone who couldn't possibly be here in the library anxiously peering at her from just a foot away-

"You're alive! Safe and sound, just like I checked for earlier, but you're here right now, in one solid piece, my Willow-tree!" The man's incredibly-familiar countenance was now as ecstatic as the announcement he'd just loudly and joyfully declared, with his arms all at once gathering her up in a jubilant hug that almost crushed the redhead's ribs and ended up with her chin perched atop his right shoulder.

Dazedly looking past the now-giggling man, Willow saw she was in one of the library chairs, with the stranger (well, not really) seated in his own chair next to hers, positioned so that, if he'd only stop hugging her, they would be facing each other side-by-side. Further beyond, Giles was stock-still behind his desk, and Buffy was also unmoving in her seat, both continuing to look straight ahead. Wistfully contemplating the prospect of fainting again, Willow's bewildered thoughts were then abruptly diverted by something else now being performed by the man holding her close.

He was crying. No, sobbing, Willow corrected herself, to start listening in stunned astonishment as she unexpectedly identified this weeping as identical to the only other person in her whole life who'd done it just like that: short, cut-off wails that were fearfully extinguished into a funny little hiccup that tried not to attract attention, especially from his drunken father, only to begin again when a little boy's grief and pain was too strong to bear-

Hastily squirming in the stranger's grip, Willow became free at last when he reluctantly let go and settled back into his chair, hands nervously clasping themselves as they were let fall into his lap. Hanging his head, the man with the tear-stained cheeks apprehensively peered up through his lowered eyebrows at the young girl in her seat staring at him in total wonderment, with Willow finally choking out, "Xander?"

The mature gentleman with the face and body of Mayor Richard Wilkins III hesitated for a moment, to then finally admit, "Yeah, kinda."


	21. Chapter 21

Willow Rosenberg watched in utter fascination as a chair currently in use that was floating several inches above the floor glided out from behind a desk, adroitly curved around this piece of furniture, and ended its journey by coming to a rest next to another chair, both at the other end of the library table, with their occupants still remaining totally motionless throughout all this. The calm features of Rupert Giles and Buffy Summers didn't even change the slightest, as these two members of the Scooby Gang placidly gazed up the table at the other chairs taken by the second pair of the small group that supported the Slayer. Who, as Willow nervously realized, was going to make someone _really_ pay for this once she got free.

As the red-haired girl apprehensively opened her mouth to comment on that ominous possibility, she heard an unfamiliar voice next to her rumble, "Don't worry, Wils. It's only a minor stasis spell. They're totally fine, and they can see and hear everything that's going on. Which is okay, but what we need to talk about… I just want to get it all out at once, without any of the interruptions that'd come from you guys."

At the start of that reassurance, Willow had turned her head from looking at Buffy and Giles, to instead gaze wonderingly at the earnest face of…of…_Mayor Wilkins_ seated by her, who continued to keep his eyes firmly locked at the level of the girl's hairline, while the man next sheepishly muttered, "Uh, before I start, could you at least answer my question first? Why are you looking like, um… Er… What you've got on…"

As the man continued to babble while his ears turned red, Willow glanced down at her racy clothing, and she felt her own massive blush appear over her whole face and upper chest, which was currently being presented to the entire world. Not daring to raise her head at where the man in his chair next to hers had finally shut up, the smartest girl in Sunnydale High managed an awkward mumble of her own, "Buffy talked me into this when we were changing at her house. I lost my nerve and put on my ghost costume over it instead" (Willow shuddered at those last words) "before we came here, just a few _hours_ ago?"

For a few seconds, Willow was lost in her incredulity on how much had happened during only part of tonight's Halloween, until her attention was abruptly diverted by someone's commentary in a hollow tone, "You…you changed in Buffy's bedroom, and you were wearing _that_ under the sheet when we were together?"

Snapping up her head to stare in absolute disbelief at the man across from her, Willow observed a remarkably recognizable glassy expression slowly materialize upon the mature countenance of Richard Wilkins III, as he stared off into the distance past her left ear. In that instant, her world became familiar again, and without even thinking about it, Willow thrust out her hands to seize the older man's own fingers, fiercely squeezing these, as she resolutely demanded, "Xander Harris, _what happened_?"

Jerking back his attention from his surely-sexist thoughts that ordinarily Willow would have yelled at him for (and later hugged her bedroom pillow in gleeful delight at him _finally_ noticing her), Xander-of-the-yellow-crayon looked at his bestest bud, and while gently squeezing her fingers back, he gravely told the young woman, "Wils, you know that no matter what, I'll never, ever hurt you?"

Keeping her steady stare right into the face of the no-longer-stranger, Willow maintained her grip on his hands, ignoring the odd sensation of what she'd faintly brushed against on his palms, and she firmly nodded.

"Good," sighed Xander, as his eyes momentarily glowed green/yellow. "'Cause I think I better start off by telling you everything about Hyena."

* * *

Many minutes later, the final words of the story were whispered into the tear-stained face of the young girl who'd never at all taken away her gaze from the features of someone she'd only once seen up close before, and who'd wept his own desolate tears while telling of his discovery of her dead body.

Xander's heart sank when Willow finally looked down at where her hands were still gripping his own that had been used to murder someone earlier tonight, particularly when she asked in a faint whisper, "Xan, what did you say then, those four words?"

An immense wave of guilt and sorrow washed over the man, who now feared he'd forever lost her. Huskily, he muttered, "I said, 'Janus, accept these sacrifices!'"

Still intently examining the pair of large male hands in her grasp, Willow then easily turned these over, to find what she'd felt there during all of the story. Revealed there, in both palms of someone changed by Chaos magic, were embedded deep into the now-healed flesh two small pieces of dark stone from a shattered Janus statue. Willow now lifted the hands closer to her face, to peer at the identical pair of disks implanted there, both the size of the tip of a pencil eraser in the exact center of the palms, with matching carvings on their surfaces of a crude, blank-eyed mask that steadily stared upwards at the girl regarding these representations of the god of beginnings and endings.

Engrossed in her study of the objects now a permanent part of the man next to her, without looking up, Willow then quietly said, "Sacrifices, as in more than one. Ethan Rayne was the first. Who was the other?"

Looking down at the top of Willow's head bent over his hands, the man sadly replied, "Xander Harris."

After what seemed to be an endless pause after hearing that, but was in actuality just a few seconds to consider the proper response, Willow Rosenberg then lowered her head further, and she gently kissed both of his palms, directly on the marks of Janus. Lifting her head up again, with the gleam of tears at the corners of her eyes, Willow bravely smiled at someone who'd earlier tonight had given up everything possible in his former life, just for her. She started off her next statement with a slight quaver in her voice that firmed up at the end of the question. "Well, maybe we should introduce ourselves. I'm Willow Rosenberg. And you are…?"

Feeling as if his heart was going to explode in sheer joy, the man swallowed hard, and he managed to steadily answer: "Richard Wilkins the Fourth. Call me Rick."


	22. Chapter 22

"So, what happens now?" Buffy warily asked. She was a bit more subdued than might have been expected after being released from the stasis spell, but that was probably due to her recent hurried trip to the ladies' restroom with her spare outfit from the library training area, and after taking care of business, a hasty change out of her Halloween costume. Which she'd left stuffed into the corridor trashcan before Buffy had returned to the others; it wasn't like she was going to get back her costume deposit, anyway.

From the other end of the library table, the mature man with a receding hairline allowed a wry look to appear on his face, as he replied, "You get used to calling me Rick."

Buffy stiffened in her chair, sharing an indignant look with Giles next to her and seeing him wince in exasperation, an emotion that was also clearly evident in the blonde girl's next outburst. "Oh, come on, Xander! There's got to be a way to turn you back-!"

"Hey, Buffster, I got permanently marked by Janus himself!" The newly-named man glowered back at the annoyed young woman he'd just interrupted, while abruptly lifting his right hand up to shoulder level, palm outwards, to brandish it at the Slayer and her Watcher. The little piece of dark stone still embedded in the center of his hand was more than visible to both at the other end of the table, as Rick crankily continued, "It's not like a note from my mom will get me out of this!"

"Er, how can you possibly be so sure?" cautiously inquired Rupert Giles, his unwillingness to use that man's new name showed how he was still struggling to deal with all that had occurred tonight. Which, among other things, included the murder of his former friend by that boy over there who'd somehow lived up to his usual nature by unexpectedly changing into someone that just happened to be an undying sorcerer secretly ruling Sunnydale under the very noses of the Scooby Gang. Not to mention everything else that had been revealed several minutes ago in the library.

Rick sighed, and then he pityingly looked across the table at the Englishman. "Giles, I have the memories of Mayor Wilkins, who learned all kinds of major mojo stuff and in the process he managed to take over and use the Hellmouth! Plus, I also got someone's else memories about Chaos magic-" (a quick flash of pain crossed Giles' features over that rather-tactfully phrased statement) "-as well as Hyena's experiences, for whatever they're worth, and in all that, there's nothing on how to fix this! Hell, none of them would have been stupid enough to try! Go up against a _god_?"

There was quiet in the library for a few moments as the others absorbed this, until Willow then hesitantly spoke, "Xander- YEEP!" After her abrupt yelp, the red-haired girl glared up at the man next to her and snapped to him, "Don't _do_ that!"

From where he was looking down at Willow in her seat, Rick allowed his glowing green/yellow eyes to change back to normal, as he smirked at his annoyed friend, and shrugged, "Fine, then. I'll just pinch you every time you forget to use my new name." A gleeful expression now passed over the older man's face, as he held up his left hand and jabbed this at Willow's rear in her chair, making pinching motions with his thumb and forefinger.

"Don't you dare! Rick," hurriedly finished Willow, as she edged away in her seat from the man's groping fingers. Looking satisfied, this adult now pulled back his hand, and then he interestedly listened to her next words.

"Um, what I was going to say - Rick - was, why were you so sure that the Mayor would show up in City Hall again after the Janus statue was broken? I mean, we all changed back-" Willow nodded across the table at Buffy agreeing with her, and then she determinedly continued, "-but from what you told us, Wilkins was killed by Hyena in your mind. Wouldn't that have kept him from coming back to life?"

Rupert Giles' own interest sharpened as he stared across the library table at the older man there looking a bit rueful. The Watcher had also noted that inconsistency in the story he'd just heard, and he watched with close attention as Rick now reached into an inner suit pocket and resignedly pulled out something from there before then laying this object upon the library table.

It was a small, white business card.

"Yeah, you're right, Wils," good-naturedly answered Rick, gazing with deep affection at the all-A's student ever since kindergarten, who'd always helped him with his own homework from then on also. He sighed, and then continued, "From Ethan's memories, he was going to end the Chaos spell at dawn, and then sneak out of town, laughing his ass off over all the trouble he caused. Sorry, Giles, but your friend was a total bastard." Rick's eyes were sympathetic as he looked at the immobile man at the opposite end of the table clearly wrestling with his own memories and emotions.

After a few moments, Rupert Giles slowly took his glasses off his face, pulled out an handkerchief from his tweed suit, and he began to absently polish the lenses, as he looked off into the distance, a bleak expression on his features. Finally, as the subdued teenagers watching him heard the man lost in his thoughts quietly say, while still avoiding everyone's eyes, "Ethan always had a tendency to take things to extremes." The librarian then coughed, and replaced his glasses while also shamefacedly admitting, "When I was with him back then, years ago, I wasn't very much better. Both of us did whatever we pleased, regardless of the cost to others."

"_What_?" was chorused by two astonished girls now staring at Giles in disbelief. Rick, on the other hand, continued his look of commiseration (albeit with an unholy glint of mirth beginning to appear in his eye) at the man across the table presently waving his hand in a firm gesture for their attention.

"I promise I'll tell you the full details, Buffy, Willow, but later, not now! If we could please get back to the matter at hand? Er, Rick, you were about to explain how that business card had something to do with the Mayor," glowered Giles at the other man there sniggering under his breath.

"…let's do the Time Warp again…" Rick finished his sotto-voce singing and with great difficulty, he managed to get himself under control. A glance at the small rectangle of paper lying on the library table helped him become completely serious, as the man with a former politician's face now explained to the others. "See, guys, if it had only been the sash with the word MAYOR on it that was chock full of Chaos magic, that might have caused Ethan's spell to work the way it was supposed to. That spell was designed to change people, and with specific costumes, it changed those people wearing them into their specific characters. But, in the case of just pieces of costumes, or for nonspecific costumes, it usually changed their wearers into nonspecific characters. Like you, Wils."

Willow blinked at those last words, as her friend continued. "You weren't Casper, or Jacob Marley, or any other specific ghost. You were just wearing a generic ghost costume, so you got changed into a ghostly Willow Rosenberg. That happened to you too, Buffy." Rick glanced over at a fascinated Slayer listening to him with her full attention. "You dressed up as a French noblewoman, not a specific one like, um, the only one I can think of is Marie Antoinette, but you didn't intend to be her tonight, so you just got changed into a basic French noblewoman from the time of your gown, who could've been anyone. Say, who were you, anyway?"

Instead of Buffy replying to that, surprisingly enough, it was Willow who then delivered a vicious snarl that ended in the furious statement: "Madelaine Giroux, that bitch who made Cordelia Chase look like Mother Teresa!"

"Hey!" came from an indignant Buffy, once she managed to get a word in edgewise. "I keep telling you and telling you, I don't remember anything! So, quit blaming me over what Miss Priss said and did!"

BANG!

A pea-sized spark of white energy shot out of Rick's flicked forefinger, soaring to head level in the center of the library table, where it instantly detonated in mid-air, exactly like a thrown firecracker. All the others promptly clapped their hands over their aching ears, and then they stared at the older man sardonically eyeing everyone around the table. As Buffy, Willow, and Giles cautiously took their hands away from the sides of their heads, Rick dryly said, "Do you girls really want to hear the details, or should I just shut up and let you yell at each other?"

Willow and Buffy traded an evil glance full of 'this isn't over yet, but that jerk over there needs to be taken down first' and then they both shot identical glares at that meddling male who was getting too big for his boots. Blandly looking back at his annoyed friends, Rick cleared his throat, and he went on.

"Like I said before, Ethan sold me the sash and he used his mojo on it. He didn't know what I wanted it for, but that piece of cloth would've picked up who I was dressing up as when the spell finally hit. So, I got changed into Mayor Wilkins for real later tonight. Now, there were also two other things that Ethan didn't know about. One of them was Hyena. Which meant when the spell hit me, I got both of them right in my brain at the same time, and they took each other out, leaving me the one in charge and having their memories and powers."

Rick then pointed his finger at the small business card on the table, ignoring the nervous flinches from the others at this gesture. "Okay, we're getting to the _really_ important thing that Ethan totally missed. The sash brought Wilkins into me, _but _that card there had been personally owned by the Mayor, and when he gave it to me years ago, he put down on it his name in his own handwriting! So, when I took the card in my wallet to the costume shop and Ethan accidentally juiced it up with his Chaos magic, later on I had what was basically a back-up copy of Richard Wilkins III loading himself onto that card at the same time Ethan's spell hit the MAYOR sash!"

Leaning back into his chair, Rick patiently allowed the others to work out the rest in their minds. It was Giles who was the first to speak, indicating he'd finished thinking it through. "That means…when you returned to the costume shop, you had Mr. Wilkins with you in that card, and breaking the statue would've brought him back to life."

"Got it in one, G-man," nodded Rick, ignoring the usual glower from the Briton over that detested nickname. "I'm still not sure if the business card Wilkins would've remembered anything of what I went through later tonight, since he wasn't actually a part of me. But, like I told you, he sure would've known about the Chaos magic and the Hellmouth energies, and soon enough, everything else. The weird part is, now that I've told you guys about it, something else just occurred to me."

"What?" An alarmed Buffy beat out everyone else in her anxious question.

Giving the Slayer a crooked grin, Rick admitted, "Well, if the business card Wilkins came back to life, I still had in my head the sash Wilkins' memories. It's just possible that those could've gone back to the Mayor, too, along with the rest of me. So, Xander Harris could've changed to the Mayor tonight anyway, and I sure as hell wouldn't be here talking to you."


	23. Chapter 23

Willow yawned.

It wasn't a demure, ladylike indication of mild fatigue; it was an exhausted, jaw-cracking, every-tooth-exposed gaping hole in her face that lasted until Willow realized everyone was staring at her, and she hastily clapped both hands over her wide-open mouth. Finally getting her breath back, the red-haired girl sheepishly mumbled through her fingers still covering her lips, "What? I've had a rough night."

Grinning at his friend, Rick agreed, "Yeah, which means it's time to wrap it up for now." Becoming more serious, as his next remarks to the others showed, "Guys, we could spend the whole week talking about everything, so let me make things quicker for everyone. First and most important: Xander Harris is _gone_. Just like so many others, he went out into the Sunnydale night, and he's never coming back. The only that that I - that _we_ can do about it is to make sure that he'll be the last one ever that disappears!"

Buffy began to protest this. "Xander-"

"NO!" roared Rick, steadily giving the shocked Slayer he'd interrupted an extremely stern look. "Buffy, this has got to stop. You and the rest just can't call me by that name anymore. Yes, I'm still me - well, mostly, but I'm also the Mayor now, and I _have_ to be him! Because of _that_!" After his last urgent statement, Rick imperiously pointed to a bare section of the library floor close to the table.

Wide-eyed, Willow managed to get out, "Is that where-"

Sagging back into his chair, Rick wearily nodded, "Yep, the Hellmouth itself." Glowering at them all, a still-irritated man grumbled, "Do you have _any_ idea at all of just how many mages, wizards, demons, vampires, and other evil monsters there are on earth alone, and also from other dimensions, that'd do anything to control the Boca del Infierno? Well, _I_ have, right from Wilkins' memories, and if word ever gets out that sorcerer is gone, or that he's been changed into a teenage high school student, we'll really regret it! Forget about those fiends getting a number and waiting for their turn, they'll hit town all at once and stomp the whole city into the ground during their fights with each other to take over the Hellmouth! The only lucky people in Sunnydale then will be the ones who get killed right away!" Breathing hard, Rick then paused in his rant to resolutely eye the rest of their group, all of who looked more than a bit sick at the picture their friend had just painted with his words.

Giles was the first to reluctantly speak. "Are you saying that you need to impersonate Mayor Wilkins? I must point out that there are a rather large number of objections-"

"Not impersonate, Giles," broke in Rick, impatiently shaking his head. "_Be_ him. Use his memories to run the Hellmouth, the town-"

This time it was Buffy's turn to indignantly interrupt. "But, Xan- Rick, you're not anything like him, the Mayor! How can you get away with it?"

Rick grimaced, and then he sent towards the Slayer a crooked smile, before answering, "Yeah, thank God, I'm totally different from that guy, and I sure as hell won't act exactly like him, being all friendly and informal to the voters, while plotting to sacrifice every one of 'em in his efforts to turn into a giant snake."

His features a bit green at how narrowly they'd escaped disaster, Giles murmured, "I believe you mean an Olvikan demon, Xan- er, Rick. At least, that seems to be the best identification I can presently make of whatever monstrous being that Wilkins was determined to become."

"Well, it's not gonna happen anyway, so we might as well as forget about that," shrugged Rick, who then suddenly developed a mischievous look on his mature face, as he studied the Englishman across the table uneasily regarding the other adult eyeing him.

With a perfect deadpan, Richard Wilkins IV now mused, "Hey, instead of whatever Dad planned, I think I'll just declare that occasion, when he would've started crawling around on his stomach, to be Rupert Giles Day for the whole city. Yessir, everybody will be urged to dress up in tweed, with prizes for those who manage the best English accent, the ability to say with a straight face that beer should be served at room temperature, and the top ten reasons in their written essays on why the French should be hated. Besides just for being the French, anyway."

A very icy British frown was then bestowed upon the other three people around the table now laughing at the top of their lungs. As he impatiently waited for them to calm down, Giles lifted his eyes in exasperation to the library ceiling, and when the hilarity finally showed signs of ending, the school librarian then lowered his gaze to see Willow wipe tears of mirth from her face, while this young woman snickered, "Yeah, that's a perfect Xander plan. Uh, Rick, I mean. Anyway, you'll use your memories to act like the way the Mayor should, right?"

A wide grin still on his own features, Rick leaned back in his chair and happily nodded his answer to Willow's question. Which was soon accompanied by another follow-up question delivered more seriously by that girl: "Okay. Um. Ah, you'll be learning all that stuff about the Hellmouth and using it to stop the bad things that go on in town, but doing it in such a way that Wilkins looks like he's just as evil and powerful as ever to those that know about him?"

"There aren't all that many, Wils." Rick furrowed his brow in deep thought. He went on to further explain from his memories, "The Mayor kept himself as low as he could under the scope of the, um, magical radar of his enemies and other neutrals. He didn't - doesn't - have any real allies, and that's just fine with him. Fewer chances to guess his secrets. Anyway, he defends his territory as anonymously as possible - which doesn't mean he'll particularly care about the body count on their side - and he's done it well enough over the last century that he's built up a pretty nasty reputation among the other surviving monsters who might ordinarily take over. They know enough to usually stay away, but if they have to come to the Hellmouth anyway on business or pleasure or some other reason, they negotiate first with Wilkins, with him using cut-outs to keep his competition from figuring out who's really in charge. Even if they actually meet up with him, for all they know, he's just a low-level corrupt human politician passing along the orders of his boss, the Hellmouth sorcerer. Yeah, it's kinda involved, but you can't argue with success."

A raised eyebrow from Giles was accompanied by that man's doubtful inquiry, "He actually got away with the ploy of the minion or minor character revealing himself to be the evil mastermind in the last chapter?"

Rick shrugged. "I didn't say he _invented_ that trick, just that it worked well enough for him, among other things." He glanced with interest next to himself at a blushing Willow opening and closing her mouth, as if trying to work up the courage to say something. "Cat got your tongue, Wils?"

Giving the other two members of the Scooby Gang across the table a beseeching look, Willow then dolefully turned to her friend and wailed right into his face, "Xan, about the other stuff- Look, I was _there_ in our Civics class back in junior high during finals, when you got up from your desk and sang to everyone the song 'I'm Just A Bill' from Schoolhouse Rock! How can you possibly govern a whole city?"

Smirking at an unhappy Willow, Rick then nostalgically pointed out to her, "Hey, I passed! Even got a B-minus for it, too." Eyeing Buffy and Giles with their own appalled faces, the mature man's smirk deepened, as he raised an index finger to tap his temple several times. "Guys, I've also got all of Wilkins' memories on actually running Sunnydale for the humans. Yeah, he's become completely bored about the job, considering he's done it for decades, but that doesn't mean he's not good at it! I'm absolutely sure I can fake it- Hell, every once in a while, you hear on television or read about it in newspapers about some kid getting elected to public office, even as the mayor, in some small town."

After finishing that last sardonic statement, Rick glanced around the library table, at where the others had all developed the identical mulish expression that indicated they were prepared to further argue about this. He then raised his right hand and waved it in a clear signal for them to instead keep quiet and pay attention to him. "Look, it's getting really late, and we've got to leave here. But, before we do that, I want- need to ask you to go along with something. It's because you're still calling me Xander, which means you still think of me as him, not Rick Wilkins Eye Vee."

Buffy protested, "Hey! It's only been, what, an hour or so that we learned about the new you?"

Rick nodded his reluctant acceptance over that, but he stressed to the others, "It doesn't matter. Like I said before, you _have_ to get used to accepting the fact that Xander Harris is gone, and that there's absolutely no connection between that vanished guy and the Mayor. One slip, and it might mean disaster if other people and not-people put two and two together and try to take advantage of it. So…I'd like to place a spell on everybody right here and now."

Rupert Giles sharply said, "_What_ sort of spell?"

Sighing, Rick told them, "It's a variation of Sunnydale Syndrome, but instead of blurring or removing memories, it adds one. What it'll do, it makes you _know_ that Xander Harris vanished on Halloween night, and he never came back. It'll also cause you to feel, behave, and act exactly like you would have if that really happened."

Looking with horror at the man next to her, Willow blurted, "You want us to _forget_ about you?"

An appalled Rick stared at the red-haired girl in her chair beginning to cry. Hastily putting his arm around her shoulders, the mature man quickly reassured Willow as he hugged her to him, "NO, Wils! Deep inside your mind, you'll still know that I'm still around and that I was changed into the Mayor. But you won't be able to say, write, or sign this to anyone, and since that spell will be powered by the Hellmouth energies, including Sunnydale Syndrome, nobody here in town will ever be able to get it out from you, not by any other kind of magic, hypnosis, or mind-reading abilities."

"That spell…seems to be a variant of a geis, Rick," frowned Giles at the pair across the library table still embracing. "Those enchantments always have the possibility of accidentally violating that obligation or prohibition, with the breaking of that binding causing great grief."

"He wants to put a spell that's a big white duck on us?" A bewildered Buffy Summers then flinched at the triple synchronized stares of disbelief being sent to her from all the others.

"G-E-I-S or G-E-A-S, Buffy," Giles resignedly spelled out to the Slayer. "It's an idiosyncratic taboo, similar to being under a vow, but instead cast or bespelled by another. That sort of enchantment is very common in Celtic mythology-"

"Okay, okay you don't have to read aloud to me a whole book about it," interrupted a sheepish Buffy, who then sent a glower at where Rick and Willow were snickering to each other, having let go of their hug and sitting back in their chairs, smiling at the Slayer, who had her face suddenly scrunch up in thoughtful dismay. "Hey, that geese spell - it'll make me feel really bad about you being missing, since that means you probably ran into a vamp or other demon and got killed?"

Rick had an equally saddened expression then appear on his features. "I'm afraid so, Buffy. You'll also feel unhappy in various degrees while telling or being around other people who also learn about my disappearance, depending on how much they know about the Sunnydale nightlife. Your mom, say, might think I'm a runaway and you'll have to agree with her while also feeling sad both about my demise and that Joyce can't be told otherwise. It'll be different for you when Cordy learns about it, since she knows about the Scooby Gang and what lurks in the dark, so you and Giles and Wils will have to act sad in another way. But none of you will ever break the geis." At those last words, Rick saw out of the corner of his eye Willow stiffening with alarm in her chair.

"Rick, what about your- Xander's mom and dad?" At that aghast question from the red-haired girl, Buffy and Giles also stared with shock at each other over something that nobody had previously considered, until this pair switched their attention back up the library table, where a stone-faced man was bleakly regarding them all, until his thinned lips opened to tersely speak.

"What about them?"

Willow beat out the others to start a choked response of "But you-" until she was thoroughly cut off by someone who'd clearly had enough.

"That's _private_. Now, do you want to have me put the spell on you, or not? Look, you'll still know deep inside that I'm still alive, plus it won't be permanent - just for a couple of weeks. Hell, considering the way things work in this town, I'll be completely forgotten by everyone then, just like Jesse!" Rick's angry gaze swept around the room, successfully silencing all there, who had to admit that he had an actual point. Taking a deep breath, the man with the politician's face then gritted out, "Also, if you really need to end the spell before that, all you have to do is to come back here, sit in the same chairs you're in now, and have everyone say at the same time, 'I want the spell placed on me at Halloween to stop.' You'll be able to talk to anyone you like then and be back to normal."

There was a frozen pause in the room, until someone finally reacted. Rick felt a small hand clasp itself around his own left hand, and startled, he looked over to see and hear a sadly-accepting Willow Rosenberg by him sniffle, "I'll do it, Xander, and don't growl at me, because I just want to say your name for maybe the last time." As she squeezed his hand once, the young woman wiped at her tear-stained face with her other hand.

Buffy Summers felt her own eyes prickle at this, and she impulsively spoke, "Yeah, that goes for me too." The Slayer then appealingly looked at the Watcher next to her now furiously polishing his glasses.

Rupert Giles concentrated upon his task, not meeting anybody's eye, until he finally sighed, and placed his glassed upon the table, to examine everyone there with a rather unfocused stare. At last, there came from the Englishman a reluctant nod, and an equally unenthusiastic mutter, "Very well, as Shakespeare wrote, 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.'"

"No problem, G-man." Still holding onto Willow's hand, Rick Wilkins IV closed his eyes. An instant later, the other three people there felt a quick throbbing sensation throughout their heads. Before anyone could actually react, they saw Rick open his eyes again and heard him say in calm satisfaction, "Okay, guys, it's done, just like Giles wanted."

"_What?_" burst from Buffy, beating out the others there. "I don't feel any different from what just happened!"

Rick shrugged, and he also gently removed his hand from Willow's grasp, while telling them all, "Oh, the spell won't start actually working until you leave the library." The older man then looked across the library table at the Briton somewhat shakily replacing his glasses upon his face. "Giles, can you take Wils and Buffy back to their homes in your car?"

"Er, certainly. But what are you going to do, Rick?" tentatively asked the Watcher.

Leaning back in his chair, Rick waved a casual hand around at their surroundings, "I'm just gonna stay here for a while. I need to study the Hellmouth up close, anyway, and it's also a good chance to stock up on my mojo without any other Big Bad noticing. Plus, I'll also scan the town, keep an eye on things and make sure no troublesome demon decided to take advantage of tonight to roam around." Smiling at everyone, Rick then began to fade away, his body becoming intangible enough so that the staring Scooby Gang could see right through him at the back of his chair. Finally, he completely vanished, until a chuckling voice came out of thin air where he'd previously been sitting. "I'll see you guys first thing Monday morning here, and we can work on our plans then. Oh, yeah, I'll be right here - the library's the only place in town where your geis won't work and you can talk to and about me, without any problems. See ya, gang."

Blinking in sheer astonishment, Willow, Buffy, and Giles traded bewildered glances, and after hearing nothing else, they cautiously got out of their seats, and headed towards the library door with equal wariness and an occasional glance over their shoulder at the empty chairs. During this, Buffy looked startled, and she then cleared her throat to get the attention of the man walking next to her. "Giles, on our way, could you stop off at Crawford Street? I want to check-"

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Buffster!" An exasperated voice without an accompanying body rang throughout the library. "I _told_ you that Deadboy was fine! If you really have to know…" The voice from an invisible Mayor trailed off into irritated grumbling, and in the next second, a yard-wide image of a Sunnydale street map appeared, hanging in mid-air just before the library doors. At one specific location of a structure, a pulsating red dot glowed, followed by Rick's sardonic commentary: "See? He's right there at this moment, and no, I'm _not_ going to show you what he's doing! For all we know, he celebrates Halloween by dressing up in a white disco suit and dancing the night away in his bedroom to the soundtrack of that Travolta film! Like I _really _need to see that!" At those last derisive words, the library doors opened without anyone touching them.

An annoyed Buffy then stalked through the passageway, trailed along after by a giggling Willow and Giles with his own twitching lips, which meant that none of this trio noticed the library doors soundlessly closing after them. Until after they'd all taken a few steps down the school corridor, Willow's face suddenly turned blank, and the red-haired girl stopped short, calling to everyone there also halting in mid-step to look at her in surprise. "Guys, wait up. I need to check something."

Turning around, Willow went back to the library doors and pulled open the right-hand panel. Peering into the book-filled room, she examined the entire deserted area, only to jump slightly when another girl's voice spoke into her ear. "What's going on, Wils?"

"Oh, nothing. I thought maybe I forgot something here, but I can't remember what it was. It'll probably come to me, I guess," shrugged Willow to Buffy who'd joined her and was also glancing over the Sunnydale native's shoulder into the empty library. "C'mon, let's get out of here. Maybe Xander left a message for me on my home phone about what happened to him. I'll call you at your house if he did."

"Gotcha, Wils." Buffy stepped back and around, soon followed after by Willow to where Giles was waiting for them in the corridor. Calling over her own shoulder above the sound of the other girl's closing of the library door, the Slayer commented, "Well, at least we know what we're doing this weekend, trying to find out just what happened on Halloween, even if nobody really got hurt."

Long after the footsteps of the departing trio died out in the hallways of Sunnydale High, that school was totally silent, until there was then delivered a remarkably sad sigh from out of thin air inside the library.


	24. Chapter 24

Rick Wilkins appeared out of thin air in front of the small, rather shabby house on the quiet Sunnydale street at the wolf hour, about three o'clock in the morning. Apparently, this area had escaped the recent Halloween anarchy resulting from Ethan's Chaos spell; though, in any case, the neighborhood trick-or-treaters would have known better than to ring the doorbell of that specific house and then demand candy, considering exactly who lived there. Even such a measure of revenge as TP'ing the unkempt front yard and the dying tree by the cracked sidewalk would have been thought far too risky, since the first thing every new kid was told after moving in by the other children was the warning, "Stay away from the Harris house!"

*House,* bitterly reflected the man on the front sidewalk, staring with his mystic vision at the neglected dwelling. He could now actually see the multiple protective wards shining brightly in the vicinity, all unknowingly created by Sunnydale residents around their homes that kept vampires from entering without the specific permission of those who lived there, glowing in various degrees depending upon how much affection the inhabitants felt for each other and their homes. In the entire neighborhood, this was the _only_ house without a single glimmer of protection.

The sorcerer had enough Sunnydale Syndrome wrapped around his presence to have been totally ignored even if he'd shouted at the top of his lungs, but Rick instead confined himself to merely snarling under his breath, "A fledgling vamp five minutes after digging themselves out of the grave, dirt still dribbling from their ears, could have strolled right inside without any trouble at all!"

Cynically shaking his head, Rick then stalked towards the house, up the concrete walkway with grass growing through the gaps in this, and then he absently waved his right hand, causing the front door to swing wide ajar without actually touching it, not breaking his stride as he then stepped through the open doorway. An instant later, he came reeling back outside, spinning around on the entryway and then standing there to start gasping for breath while also trying to control his stomach. Gagging, Rick choked out, "Oh, so _that's_ why no vamp ever murdered us all in our beds!"

For the man who'd just acquired the heightened senses of a primal animal spirit, it was actually excruciating to smell the overpowering scent of two long-time human drunks fast asleep in their beds, with the odors of long-ago spilled alcohol, vomit, and other body fluids still tenaciously hanging around inside the house, despite all the cleaning a young boy dared to do without being walloped by an alcoholic father for acting 'sissy.' Rick muttered, "Geez, I can't believe I got used to that while living here and finally stopped paying attention! Jesse and Wils were polite enough not to say anything on their rare visits, but it must have been why they stopped coming here. Well, beside the obvious reason."

Slowly turning around to once more face the open doorway, Rick glared into this entrance leading further into the dark house. A quick cantrip later, the man followed his newly-deadened nose into the residence, keeping as quiet as possible out of sheer habit. Plus, Rick really wasn't in the mood to confront an awakened Tony and Jessica Harris and their accompanying hangovers.

A couple of minutes later, after exiting the bedroom that had once been occupied by Xander Harris, Rick clutched a few items in his hands while then heading towards a door leading off the messy kitchen. He quietly opened this panel and then he headed down the steps in the cramped flight of stairs, finally coming to the landing of the basement. Rick cautiously looked around for any changes since his last visit a month ago, until he was satisfied that his glowing green/yellow eyes had no trouble with seeing inside the nearly pitch-black room under the house, a building addition that was rare for Southern California, but which had always been taken for granted by a young Xander, who had his own reasons for coming here in the past.

Edging his way past the usual household junk found in this place, Rick made his way to the far corner of the basement, and he then knelt down on the concrete floor, to shove aside a leather trunk covered completely with cobwebs, which showed to the man there that nobody had disturbed this container for a long time. Not since he'd done so himself, anyway. Reaching out to grab a screwdriver hidden nearby under a heap of rags, Rick used this tool to carefully remove the screws from a good-sized vent in the basement wall, almost at floor level, revealed when he'd moved the trunk. Yanking off the steel screen of the vent, Rick put this, the screwdriver, and the screws together out of the way on the floor, and then he reached into the vent.

A muffled curse later as he barked a knuckle dragging out the metal box hidden inside, Rick then shifted from his kneeling position to instead sit tailor-fashion in front of the vent, placing his box of personal stuff onto his lap. Giving the container a fond rub, the man unlatched the box and he opened the lid to then closely examine the contents.

The first thing at hand was a thick envelope that Rick picked up to thoughtfully weigh in his hand, until with a shrug of his shoulders, the mature man then casually placed this with its contents of nearly a thousand dollars inside a suit pocket. For a variety of reasons, he really didn't need the money anymore, what he'd labored for the last couple of years on weekends and summers of mowing lawns and other chores around the neighborhood, to take a no-longer-possible road trip with Jesse. Still, he sure as hell wasn't going to leave the cash behind and possibly be found by Tony. Even though that bastard might actually croak from trying to drink away every penny of it!

Showing his teeth in a vicious snarl, Rick then eyed what had been under the envelope, and his angry expression now changed into a rueful grimace. A wave of a finger, and his porn stash vanished, on its way to a dumpster behind the Bronze, which was now pretty much the best place for it.

That act of magic revealed something more innocent and much more treasured. Carefully reaching into the box to gingerly lift out the bunch of comic books individually placed in their plastic wrappers, Rick brought up the stack of magazines in front of his face to nostalgically examine what was revealed there on top of the stack, savoring the cover of X-Men 1 and its young mutant superheroes rushing into action against Magneto.

"Damn, Jesse, but you had such a good time gloating about this to me when you used your birthday money to score it!" softly chuckled the man to himself, who suddenly had tears in his eyes. Just like Mrs. McNally, before she and Jesse's dad had left Sunnydale, when his best friend's mom had told Xander he could have whatever he wanted of her vanished son's stuff. It had taken that woman's stern urging while barely keeping her own emotions under control before a paralyzed Xander had sadly chosen what comics there were in Jesse's closet.

Gently placing the comics next to him, Rick tenderly kept his right hand resting on top of the stack, and he brought up his left hand to wipe away at his eyes while also performing a massive sorrowful sniff. After finishing, the man gave a light pat to the pile of magazines, most of which were almost as valuable as the first issue of that teenage mutant team. Not that this meant anything to someone who just last night had been about the same age as the early X-men; even if those comics had been the complete run of _Sugar and Spike_, Rick would have cherished them all, anyway. They'd been _Jesse's_, which made them priceless.

Just like the last things left in the metal box taken from the vent. Rick again carefully removed these, to be placed on top of the stack of comics. There were all the photographs he had of Jesse, which were followed by more pictures removed from his suit pocket, these being of his friend that had been in his bedroom a few minutes before, the only things he'd bothered to collect during his short visit there. Besides the fact that he couldn't take anything else without possibly making people suspicious, Rick didn't really need or want what Xander had previously owned. Even his most eye-searing Hawaiian shirts had to be left behind, if only because they didn't fit anymore.

Rick moodily shrugged, trying to drive away his sudden melancholy. In part, he succeeded by what he did next, which was to take out the remaining items in his box. These were a lot of photographs of Willow over the years, with some of the newest pictures being Buffy, her mom, and Giles. There were also some souvenirs from school, including reports, artwork, and the like, all the way back to first grade, kept simply because he'd done well on them and his teachers had actually praised these in their written comments, which had meant more to Xander Harris than these educators could have ever known, when they'd put down their approval that a child desperately yearned for and never received from those who should have truly given to him.

Finally, with the utmost care, Rick took the very last thing from the box. It was a crudely-scissored heart cut out from thick red paper folded over, to make a Valentine's Day present for him on that holiday during first grade. Delicately unfolding the fragile heart, Rick deeply smiled at once more seeing the clumsy writing there: WILOW + XANDUR.

Several minutes later, Rick Wilkins IV stood on the front sidewalk, his back to the house where Xander Harris had grown up. Holding a grocery bag filled with the items he'd come for and which were the only reason for his visit, the stony-faced man stood there stock-still for a few moments, the sole indication of life being the slow rise and fall of his chest. That specific action caused Rick to feel the faintest crinkling of paper in his front shirt pocket over his heart, where he'd placed a little girl's loving gift, and this impulsively led him to a decision that he'd thought inconceivable even ten minutes ago.

Closing his eyes, the sorcerer concentrated for a few moments. Then, Rick firmly nodded to himself once, still with his eyes shut, and he vanished into thin air, seemingly ignoring everything around in his vicinity.

In the Harris house, two people continued their drunken slumbers, never to know that their son, in whatever form, had paid one last visit. Nor would they ever know, that as long as they resided in their dwelling, some of the most powerful protective wards in the entire city of Sunnydale would continue to exist around this house.

Tony and Jessica Harris had given Xander Harris his life. Rick Wilkins IV had given this alcoholic couple their lives and a chance to change for the better - if they chose to do so. He would do nothing more for them, ever.


	25. Chapter 25

He didn't particularly _want_ to go in there.

Rick Wilkins IV stood uncertainly on the other side of the street from the Sunnydale City Hall, absently shifting from one bare foot to the other, as he eyed the building that the Mayor called his office workplace. In his mind, Rick grumbled to himself that the word 'lair' depicted that structure far better than that politician's misleading description.

Switching his attention back to the building, Rick idly noted that there were only a few lit windows in that darkened place, probably for the cleaning crew busy at their night's work. Nobody else was likely to be in there, considering it was well past the midnight hour. The teenager in the mature man's body thought that over. Maybe he could sneak past-

*Hey!* Rick mentally scolded himself. *You're the Mayor now! You can walk right in there anytime you like without caring about what other people think! Yeah…plus, considering how busy it's been tonight with all the uproar resulting from Ethan's spell, they might actually expect you to be there.*

Brightening up from his glum mood, Rick stepped off the sidewalk and he headed across the street towards his place of power. Halfway across the avenue, the man noticed his bare feet, and with a faint grin on his face at an unexpected spell popping up in his mind, he cast a trifling enchantment to cover those parts of his body with a minor glamour, an illusion that would make anyone else glancing downwards see Mayor Wilkins wearing his normal pair of spit-shined men's business shoes.

Of course, even if he actually encountered them, the cleaning crew was fairly unlikely to have someone belonging to that group as obsessed with footwear as his blonde friend, with Buffy herself having demonstrated often enough her own passion for wearing the most unsuitable high-heeled shoes during her Slayer patrols. No sirree, the people that every night energetically tidied up the main government building for Sunnydale were the most professional, expert, and devoted collectors of organic waste and other discarded materials that the Mayor could find and hire, making them worth every penny the city paid those first-rate ghouls, flesh-eating revenants, and other garbage-consuming demons.

Two seconds later, a pale-faced Rick was back on the other side of the street, breathing hard from his frantic dash back there, and then shuddering from the images he'd just found in his memories, courtesy of Mayor Wilkins.

*Okay, it can wait until Monday. _Anything_ can wait until Monday!*

Well, except for the main reason why Rick had come to City Hall tonight - this morning, rather. He needed a place to stay.

Glowering at the specific dark windows in the building where the Mayor had his own private apartment, Rick tried to think of somewhere else to lay down his weary head to rest. He sure as hell wasn't going back to the Harris house, and dropping in on his friends right now meant the possibility of complications with the geis that Rick had previously cast upon Buffy, Willow, and Giles in the school library. Not to mention that they'd doubtless already dozed off in their beds an hour or so ago, and waking up any of them would result in facing a really cranky member of the Scooby Gang.

Sighing, Rick shifted the keepsakes cradled in his arms into a more comfortable position, which made something in his suit pocket rub against his body. A frowning man looked down at himself, to then break into a sudden grin. Yeah, the summer-jobs money in the envelope - he'd forgotten all about it! That would get him a room at some motel or hotel in Sunnydale, for sure, and there wouldn't even be the normal problems of those public lodging places in this town having almost no protective wards against vampires, now that the only blood-drinking demon remaining in the whole city was probably also fast asleep in his coffin now, dreaming his happy dreams of owning the complete Clairol line of hair products.

Rick snorted to himself, and then he looked around the deserted, dark street, trying to remember if there was a hotel nearby. Another frown passed over his face, when the former high school student suddenly realized a further complication. He'd have to check in and pay for his room - something that Xander Harris had never done before in his whole life - but that wasn't what particularly concerned Rick. No, looking as he did now, the desk clerk of whatever hotel he picked was almost certainly going to recognize Mayor Wilkins taking a room for the next couple of days, and unless the mature man with the receding hairline stayed in his new quarters during all that time and also had his meals sent in, that politician was also going to be noticed by the other guests and the hotel staff, any of who might wonder why the mayor of Sunnydale was residing there instead of in his own home.

Rick sighed again. It looked like Rupert Giles was going to acquire an unexpected guest for the weekend. As he headed off towards that Englishman's apartment, his bare feet padding against the sidewalk, Rick dryly noted to himself that a certain pair of eyeglass lenses were going to be polished to within an inch of their lives. It might also be a good idea not to ask for breakfast in bed-

*Heeeey.*

Coming to an abrupt halt as he remembered something, Rick slowly lifted up his right leg, holding it out straight until this limb was perfectly parallel with the ground, and examining with fascination the glamour there that he'd put on his foot just moments before. It still seemed as if he was wearing a shiny black business shoe, despite the fact that he could feel the cool night air brushing against his exposed skin. Beginning to grin, Rick now vigorously wiggled his toes inside his non-existent shoe, watching how this made that phantom footwear flex.

Absently putting his leg back down, the man standing on the sidewalk now bent down to place onto there his grocery bag filled with Xander's treasured mementoes, and he then straightened up, divested of his burden, to look thoughtful for a few moments, until after Rick was sure he knew the spell, the teenager waved a negligent hand in front of himself. Appearing out of thin air, a rectangular sheet of mirrored glass the length and width of his body hung there, remaining absolutely motionless as this mirror now showed an approving Rick his reflection as Mayor Wilkins. *Lessee, start with something easy-*

An eye-blink later, Rupert Giles stood there, an unique expression of an ear-to-ear grin on that Briton's face, as he scrutinized with absolute delight the glamour that Rick had just cast over his entire body to make him perfectly resemble this librarian, down to the sparkling-clean glasses resting on his nose. Unable to pass up the chance, Rick both crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the mirror, to then roar with laughter at someone's absurd facial contortions that he'd never otherwise have had the chance to witness. Still giggling, Rick now brought up his right hand, to take off Giles' glasses and start seeing how well he could imitate that man's nervous habit of polishing them.

"OW!"

He'd just poked himself in the eye. Staring in astonishment at the mirror while gingerly rubbing his aching orb, Rick was nonplussed by seeing how a flummoxed Giles' fingers massaging his face were passing right through his glasses to touch his skin. Thinking aloud, Rick muttered to himself, "So, I can make things appear to be on someone, but they're not really real or there. Kinda like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation…" Trailing off, Rupert Giles now had in the mirror an absolutely maniacal smile on his face, as he gleefully whispered, "Oh, yeah!"

In the next second, Jean-Luc Picard stood there on the Sunnydale sidewalk, a truly immature snicker coming from that starship captain as he rubbed his bald head while being reflected in the magic mirror, but with Rick actually feeling his close-cropped hair there. Next came the rest of the casts of all incarnations of that science fiction show, including the television and movie versions.

Then, the entire company of the Star Wars series.

Then, every single comic book character that Rick could imagine.

Then, after a quick, furtive look around the deserted street and a last double-check of the Sunnydale Syndrome wrapped around him that concealed his presence, some of the more pneumatic ladies from Xander's porn stash. Rick _really_ regretted his glamour spell's limitations at that point. Still, there were compensations, as proved by the result of immediately starting a very energetic set of jumping jacks.

Eventually, an exhausted Rick came to a stop (and a few moments later, so did the rest of him), reluctantly waving his dainty hand to change himself back to his original appearance of Mayor Wilkins. Sighing in momentary bliss to his once more male reflection in the mirror, Rick then sternly told himself that enough was enough, and he ihad/i to go to a hotel, now that he'd figured out how to do so anonymously. Or, at least as some actor well down in the credits of the most obscure movie or television show that Rick could bring to mind. He really didn't think it would be a good idea to sign autographs.

Nodding sadly to himself, Rick now waved his hand once more, causing the magic mirror to disappear from existence, and in his sweaty clothes, the man went to pick up his grocery bag and then find a hotel and take a long, long shower. As he straightened up with his mementoes, a stray thought flashed through his mind, causing Rick to stiffen in shock, and then to groan to himself, "Oh, man, why didn't you think of _that _before? It took you long enough to come up with that, wasting all this time. You're really gonna have to dig deeper in your memories, no matter if you've got all that stuff as Xander and Ethan and Hyena, and especially Mayor Dick!"

Shaking his head in disgust, Rick Wilkins IV now vanished into thin air.


	26. Chapter 26

His bare feet resting comfortably on the blacktop of the single-lane road, Rick Wilkins stood in the middle of this lane, and he gazed across the roadway and the rural land beyond, down to where the entire city of Sunnydale spread out in the valley that had given his hometown its name. Being at the highest point in the whole place at the furthest east city limits, from his elevation the man approvingly noted that things seemed to have finally quieted down from this night's Halloween chaos, with the municipality once more fast asleep and hopefully without any ongoing nightmares in people's heads about unexpectedly changing into their costumes.

Grimacing at that latter thought, Rick then glanced to his right, where the road went down towards the city, and through the rich folk's places starting further on at both sides of this avenue that had changed into a proper double-lane road. There, the wealthy families of Sunnydale had developed their compounds and estates from the former farms and ranches that had occupied this area a century ago. Back when he'd been that teenager, Xander Harris had never been here before in his life despite living in Sunnydale all that time, but he knew this part of the town by reputation, and also from a certain resident who'd been more than happy to boast about her home at the slightest opportunity. The mature man idly wondered exactly what Cordelia Chase's Halloween had been like tonight.

Shrugging to himself, Rick now looked over on his left, up the narrow, well-maintained road to where a mile further on, this street came to an abrupt halt in a fenced-off dead end. Beyond that was open countryside rising up to the hills that surrounded Sunnydale, all of it state land and being a rarely-visited section of the county park that extended along the east side of the city.

Rick thoughtfully eyed the point where the road suddenly stopped in a cul-de-sac, his lips wryly twitching when he noticed the immaculate condition of this area. Ordinarily, anywhere else in the whole country, where such a good road lead to an isolated spot with a great view of the city lights below, this would have been the perfect place for generations of teenagers to fog up the windows of a car with your date sharing this vehicle with you, resulting in the usual outcome and the speedy disposal of the end product, right out the car window. However, a sniggering man dressed in an outdated formal suit was absolutely sure, without even bothering to go over and look, that there wasn't a single used condom littering the ground at the dead end.

Not when behind him was the Wilkins farm.

As he turned around to stare at the line of nearly century-old oak trees along the road that had been planted back then to mark the boundaries of a complete section of land, about 640 acres, or a full mile on each side of a square, Rick reflected to himself that name was something of a misnomer, since this place had never actually produced crops or livestock in its entire existence. Oh, there had once been a vegetable garden there, but that was pretty much it during all the time the original Richard Wilkins of the multiple roman numerals had owned the property.

A fascinated Rick continued exploring the Mayor's memories concerning his former home. It had been part of the original Spanish land grant when the first settlers from Mexico had moved into the area containing the Boca del Infierno at least two centuries ago. Though, this actual site had remained unsettled and open land for decades afterwards, throughout the region's varied history of being owned by Spain, then becoming part of an independent Mexico, and winding up as a new country's territory when the United States had taken over in the first half of the nineteenth century, culminating in its current identity as a tiny bit of California real estate.

Rick's eyebrows rose in mild surprise when Wilkins' memories went on to note that politician hadn't been the original owner, having brought the place back in 1903 from a land speculator who'd gotten a few thousand acres for a song from the federal government and then surveyed the boundaries of his new purchase, splitting it into proper sections of property and then hopefully awaiting the arrival of potential customers looking for a good place to live, which one day included a young man and his new wife.

Now he was _really_ flabbergasted, as an astonished Rick, who'd never considered the fact that the Mayor might have once been married, now gazed into someone's happy memories of life with their spouse, including how they'd spent the first night in their newly-built house-

His face flaming bright red, Rick hastily shoved those embarrassing memories into the deepest corner of his mind, where he'd already squirreled away those more distasteful recollections of what the Mayor had done in his extra-long life during the politician's ruthless control of the Hellmouth. Frantically searching in his head for a more restrained set of memories, Rick gratefully found out why Wilkins hadn't simply brought the land occupied by the dimensional nexus and lived there when he'd first arrived, instead of a place that was pretty far away from the town, right on the edge of that municipality's city limits.

In the past a century ago, that particular location of the fine town of Sunnydale where a portal to hell dimensions lurked was owned by numerous title-holders, and even Wilkins couldn't get control of every bit of property right away. It had taken literally decades for that politician to maneuver all of the landowners into selling, deeding, or otherwise transferring their ownership to the city, particularly since he had to be extremely subtle about it while using his magic and also keeping the necessary bloodshed to a minimum of throat-cutting and then feeding the bodies to the nearest hungry demon.

Wincing at the flashes of horrible memories evoked by this, Rick was more than willing to be distracted by Wilkins' answer on why it had been necessary to be truly discreet back then, along with living so far away from the Hellmouth. Simply put, that sorcerer had no great desire to be an actual target of any other human or demonic competitor also seeking to control the mystical nexus. Any magical rival having a single ounce of sense would first find out all they could about that place of power, and if the number one piece of information discovered by those evil bastards was the fact that a certain Richard Wilkins the whatever owned every square inch of the Hellmouth, the next step would certainly be an all-out attack upon the mayor of Sunnydale.

No, as long as it was clear to everyone else having dreams of world domination or some other obsessive goal that involved dark rituals, minions, wicked ceremonies held exactly at midnight while wearing really tacky robes and intoning a fifteen-minute monologue with every word starting with a capital letter that caused the virgin sacrifice to start yawning, that nobody seemed to really possess this center of all evil located on public land, and that the local authorities appeared to be totally clueless about what was going on regarding the magical world. Which meant the Hellmouth was now ripe for the taking, and let's get busy beginning the apocalypse!

A little while later, at the end of his working day, Mayor Richard Wilkins I, II, or III would be preparing to stay at his family homestead for the weekend, tidying up his desk at City Hall, while reflecting that young people had absolutely no idea of proper manners these days, and if those now-deceased usuperers had only lasted a few more moments longer before totally dissolving into multi-colored puddles of goo in the middle of the latest attempt to seize the Hellmouth, they would have heard a firm reproof delivered in a folksy tone that _he_ would be the one to begin the extinction of humanity, and it'd be done completely on his terms, thank you very much.

As for why the mayor always continued to stay at the family farm whenever possible… Well, Edna May had fallen in love with the place the moment she'd laid eyes upon it, and even after so long, her former husband had no problem whatsoever with keeping their home in good order and also making sure that trespassers never encroached upon the property.

Still in his position of staring at the line of oak trees that shielded everything further on behind a wall of greenery, Rick bemusedly shook his head, and he took a cautious step forward, to then abruptly halt at sensing the faintest twinge of magic. Standing there in the road, the mature man marveled at one of the most subtle spells he'd yet encountered, a delicate casting that would send a barely-noticeable, insinuating message deep inside the mind of whatever approaching intruder that there was nothing of importance here at this totally ordinary farm, and any interlopers had much better things to do with their time and efforts than to enter the homestead. The spell was done so skillfully that even Rick now felt like turning around and amiably departing, despite that every one of his memories _knew_ he'd cast this enchantment in the first place!

"Damn, dude, you were _good_." said Rick aloud to thin air in a very respectful comment to a departed mayoral shade. Smiling slightly as he again stepped forward, Rick nodded as he felt the power level of the deterrent spell continue at its original understated intensity, rather than to increase, since that might cause the first flicker of suspicion to arise in the mind of someone suddenly feeling they needed to leave as quickly as possible. The mature man now stepped off the blacktop onto the dirt at the strip of bare land between the road and the trees, and he then paused for a moment to enjoy the simple pleasure of wiggling his toes in the spongy ground.

Another step forward brought Rick under the canopy of the nearest oak tree, with these overhead branches and leaves cutting off the light into near-total darkness, since it was still a good hour or more to sunrise. Calling up Hyena for the first time in a while, Rick's eyes glowed greenish/yellow as he now easily peered around the shadows in order to find a way past the line of tree trunks that had grown to nearly touch each other, forming a living wall of wood. Finally finding a good spot, Rick managed to squirm through a gap between a pair of oaks, all while holding onto his burden of Xander Harris' mementoes that he was still carrying.

Taking a few more steps past the trees, Rick came to a dead stop again, as he examined the _second_ line of oak trees in front of him that matched exactly in age, size, and girth the row of trees he'd just passed. Looking around with interest while also eagerly sniffing the air through his heightened senses, Rick found himself to be in a narrow, grassy lane between the trees, with this canopied track continuing on either side for at least a half-mile in both directions, to where he could see the path bending out of sight at where the trees marked the corners of the section of land.

A happy whine abruptly escaped from Rick's mouth, startling him for a moment, until his lips then curved into a wide grin. Yeah, with the soft grass under his feet, the enthralling scents of green, growing things driving out from his nose the polluted odors of mankind's creations, and the yummy sounds of tiny prey hastily scrambling through the underbrush to get away from the apex predator in their midst, there was no possible way he was gonna pass up the chance for a fine run. A few moment's searching found a good enough dry spot on the ground for Rick to carefully place the grocery bag containing Xander's treasures from his former life, and then the mature man started stripping off his clothing.

When Rick was finished, he stood there breathing deeply while enjoying the cool air passing over his totally unclad body- Well. There was still one particular piece of Xander Harris' former garments that Rick Wilkins was _not _going to remove. Even if it was totally private here, and Hyena's memories were also grumbling over the monkey's refusal to take off his boxers, there was still the possibility of running into a thorny branch, or encountering a late-night bee. Not to mention the whole bouncy bouncy bouncy issue.

Smirking to himself, Rick then crouched down, got set, and took off. His bare legs flashing under his white underwear, the man had just gotten up to his top speed in his elated run, when he was forced to slow down to make the turn at the corner, but after a few more bounding steps, Rick was again moving as fast as inhumanly possible, every gleaming tooth exposed in an ear-to-ear grin, and glowing eyes closed to slits against the wind blast. Several more turns later, Rick completed his circuit of the farm, reluctantly skidding to a stop on the grassy lane just past the point where he'd placed the grocery bags and his clothing on top of these, and then started his sprint.

Standing there while just barely breathing hard, Rick mentally estimated in his head that the whole run of four miles for a quarter of that distance along every side of the square of property had probably taken only five minutes or so, which meant that he'd been moving at least 40 mph for most of that distance. And if Rick could have just managed a straight-ahead sprint instead of all those turns, the man gloated to himself that he would've left Buffy Summers behind in his dust if that Slayer had challenged him to a race.

An overjoyed Rick Wilkins now took an immense breath, and he then jubilantly uttered a deafening howl of sheer happiness that carried for miles, far enough so that this sound eventually passed through the merest crack in the open bedroom window of a magnificent house further down the street that was owned by the wealthiest family in Sunnydale, with this mansion decorated in the most fashionable and stylish manner possible, yet still devoid of the slightest trace of being an actual home.

Fast asleep in her bed after a really bizarre Halloween night, Cordelia Chase abruptly developed goose-pimples over her whole fabulous body, as her previously delightful dream of ruling the entire universe now changed inside that teenager's head to instead being chased by some hairy monster wearing nothing but a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, and for some incomprehensible reason, she actually wanted to kiss this guy!

Moaning quietly in her slumber, the beautiful brunette cheerleader rolled over in her bed, and without waking up the slightest, Cordelia yanked the pillow over her head, and she grimly held it there for the rest of the night. Which resulted in the next morning, when the young woman staggered into her bathroom and blearily looked into the mirror, she found herself staring with absolute horror into the face of someone suffering from the most hideous bed hair in the entire history of the human race.

* * *

Author's Note: My own take on the founding of the original town of Sunnydale and the role of the Mayor back then. Might be AU or not, but this is the way it's going to be for this story.


End file.
